Summer's Eclipse
by DarKade
Summary: As the immortals gather in Forks for the final battle against Diana, new alliances must be forged between ancient enemies. But the darkness flows deeper beneath her feet than Buffy knows, and if Alice does not unlock the secrets of what dwells within The Hellmouth, it will tear apart her family, her allies and her soul. From beneath you, it devours.
1. Prologue

Author's note:

NOTICE OF REWRITE!!!

Hi all, before you start this, the third installment of Summer's Twilight, I have paused this book for a major rewrite. I realised I could intercut between Buffy's planned story arc and Alice's, saving a lot of backtracking in book 4.

Existing chapters will stay close to what they are, but new chapters will be inserted. And I will throw in some more hot gay stuff to make up for it :)

In the meantime, I am wrapping an older work Unravel The Girl. Have a read!

Thanks fam. x

DarKade

ORIGINAL STARTS HERE:

This is book III in Summer's Twilight. Please read** Summer's Twilight** and **Summer's Moon** first.

Like the two before it, this fan fiction blends the universes of Twilight and Buffy to tell a tale of a girl struggling with her mental health in a supernatural world.

This time we take a journey with Alice Cullen as the protagonist- a psychic vampire who has no memory of her humanity and whose grasp on linear time is tenuous at best.

Same warnings as before: mental health, horror, sex and a frightening amount of research.

But first we kick off with Buffy. Don't worry, she will be back for the final book in the series- **Summer's Dawn**.

Comments are always appreciated XXX -DarKade.

Prologue

Beneath the thick, pallid, immortal sky, the small midwestern town of Forks cowers beneath sheets of snow.

Unremarkable, but for its annual rainfall, you would be easily fooled into thinking it utterly unimportant.

Yet, for the monsters that lurk in the shadows of our modern civilization, Forks has become the epicenter, the very axis on which our world will turn or from which it will fall.

I don't know why, but I parked on division street and walked the rest of the way to the cafe. The snow was falling around me, like lace curtains tattered in the juddery gusts, and I was once again grateful for being unaffected by the cold. Being dead will do that for you, even if it is murder on your complexion.

I hadn't bothered with the pretense of a snow jacket, everyone at the meeting knew what I was after all. So instead I settled on style, wearing clothes like the message I bore. A crisp button down and pants that said 'business', and knee high boots that said 'don't even remotely think of fucking with me.' The fact it was all black seemed fitting too. In my short life I have been many things, today, I was the harbinger of doom, the woman who had, in a single instruction, murdered Forks.

The streets were practically empty, of course, only a few souls daring the drive. The morning snow plough and salt had done its work, and you wouldn't find a local who couldn't fit snow chains, but now, in the evening, a black slush was forming and the ice forming was all the more treacherous.

My unnatural strength allowed me to carve my feet through the worst of it as if it were mere confetti- in a way, my passage through the streets felt surreal, like I wasn't really part of the world, just a ghost passing through.

I stopped as I reached the ruins of the old diner. Jessica's mother had been inside the day it had happened. The logging truck had lost control and jackknifed, slicing through the building, killing twenty-two people in all. From my vantage point by the barbed wire fence, I could see the booths split and stained just below neck height. I shuddered at the bloody imagery it conjured, hating myself that it was in delicious delight, instead of horror. But I licked my lips just the same.

I must confess, that I was confused when Jessica announced she was setting up a new cafe just down the road from the ruins of the diner. It was her mother's wish that Jessica take over the family business, a wish she pressed on her daughter to a degree that bordered on abuse. She couldn't see that to Jessica it was a millstone around her neck, the fear of growing old in Forks working the diner crushed Jessica's soul. But Jessica went ahead anyway, and beyond hiring a human to manage it and occasionally signing documents and paychecks, she seemed thoroughly disinterested in it. Duty done, as far as she was concerned. And thus Forks was blessed with a strangely out of place stylish cafe simply called 'Margret's'.

The booth Diana and I had sat at on my last day as a human in Forks was there, the torn red vinyl of the seat flapping in the chill winds. I could picture her face vividly as she hummed, and thumbed through the menu. I remembered the freckled skin of her nose, the cool green eyes behind blonde lashes, and how, despite myself, my eyes flicked to thick weave of bite scars on her neck. And oh, how I hated her for coming to take me away, even though I asked her to.

And oh, how she hated me now, for what I was, and for what I had then done to the one person she loved.

Tragedy had taken us all, one way or another. And it had only started to sharpen its claws on our bones.

Twenty-two dead in the blink of an eye. Forks had known tragedy before my return. You better brace yourself, I thought, and continued on my way.

Jeesh, I am getting so angsty-poet-y in my immortality. Lighten up Buffy, it's only the apocalypse.


	2. Buffy Summers

Chapter 1

Buffy Summers

My first ever vision of Buffy Summers came to me with such blazing ferocity, such vivid color, that it destroyed my world. No rich fabric could meet the saturation, no gold trinket could sparkle so bright, nothing and no one could hold my attention by comparison.

Because when you stare into the sun, it blinds you.

I could barely understand what I was seeing. A golden haired girl, bare legged and beaming, holding shredded balls of fabric, dancing and cheering in a wooden hall. You see, it was 1922 and cheerleading hadn't spread from Minnesota yet, and in fact women would not be allowed to cheer for another year. So the cascade of vivid color, lit by fluorescent bulbs was just alien, and strange and ruined me to the lesser charms of New York city.

So, I felt the cold and the dark more than ever. And the blood I fed upon became, if not tasteless, but sour in my mouth.

The guilt would grow from there. And from it, a conscience. The last one I took, in a stinking dark alley by the tram depot, was a man who deserved it. A predator of young women, who met an ironic end at my fangs. And still, he tasted vile to me.

So depressed, bored, listless… burning with guilt and growing ever hungrier, I was drawn from New York into the wilds.

She came again to me there, on those moon drenched nights, vision after vision, the golden girl in the strange clothes with the not-quite real smile, laughing a not-quite real laugh to her not-quite friend's jokes. I could feel her disconnection whirling about inside her, her need to be something else, someone else, and she became a puzzle to me to keep me from my darkness, a girl with everything, a mortal girl with food in her belly, all the clothes she could desire, money, a family… life.

I wondered why she came to me, as I lay amongst the leaves, soil clad, caked in the blood of my prey. Why me? Why her?

And as I glimpsed her strange life, I started to recognise myself in her. For she had visions too. Nightmares that tore at her sanity, splitting her skull wide and bleeding the light from her. I watched as golden hair grew dark roots, as her tan paled and her eyes darkened from lack of rest. She would wake, tortured and sweat soaked, weeping for release. And her parents watched all this, as I guess my own must have (though I have no memory of them at all).

And I saw her bloodied and panting, a wild eyed, dark figure against the blazing fires of her school gym. I saw them lock her away. How she became pale and thin, dark and hollow.

I could see it now. How alike we had become.

Her nightmares, her visions. She was like me. And my heart went out to her. And my heart got lost in her.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Buffy Summers. And perhaps that was my punishment and my curse for the lives I had taken.

I loved her, and I needed her, and I had to suffer. Because it would be decades, (and a second world war) before Buffy Summers would even be born.

…

Veronique Boucher was my release, my distraction. Golden haired and glowing with energy, wanton and wild. If you could capture the myth of the prohibition flapper, condense it all down into one woman, it was Veronique.

And many a man, and no doubt a few woman, fell prey to her charms. She drank the world like champagne, wove herself into the fabric of society, and tempted me back into the world again.

She was like me. The only other like me. Ice cold and crimson eyed, she drew me from solitude, back into the world. I guess I went to her to escape the cold, dark shadow that Buffy Summers had cast upon me. I had to escape, to find distraction and find something, anything to fill the emptiness. And so with Veronique it was jazz and dance and… yes… once more blood.

But nothing filled the void. The guilt stayed with me. The visions haunted me. And so I made the decision to break away from Veroniques whirlwind, to strike out on my own and forge a life I could live with, until she arrived.

I took residence in one of the houses left by Veroniques bloodlust, by chance, a girl who I resembled. A supply of animal blood from the slaughterhouse would sustain me, and my income I took from working as a seamstress, and then a sales girl for a fashion outlet.

I guess that is where I found my love of fashion. The glamour and the craft, the exotic materials and modern, challenging thinking. And deeper still, my gaze could fall, unquestioned upon those women who modeled the clothes. For lusts such as mine where deemed unseemly and unnatural. I kept them to myself, but enjoyed the stolen glances.

It seemed like a year or so passed before I saw Buffy in a vision again. Both to my joy, and to my horror, she appeared as an immortal now. Skin bleached white and hair deep brown, eyes crimson and mouth bloodied, she groaned in pleasure as she fed, and then, oh, and then she looked upon me with those crimson eyes and I knew. I just knew.

I knew she loved me.

She would be my future. And I would be hers.

…

The first time I saw her in the flesh, I could barely contain myself. I wanted to run to her, to seize her into my arms. Finally!

She sat across the room with Jessica, glancing at us, cheeks flushed and heart pounding with fear and confusion. Thump, thump, so loud and strong and real. I could smell her blood on the air, even through the busy cafeteria, the throng of bodies, her blood sang to me.

Edward told me to go. And I did, so help me, despite every nerve in my body screaming to me to claim her blood as mine. I stood, and crossed the room, dumping my tray of human food into the bin before fleeing into the fresh, damp air. My easy smile concealing rows of razor tipped fangs, dripping thicker with venom than ever before. And the throb between my legs hammering heat through my veins.

I don't remember what it was to be alive. But I wager it was like that sensation. I felt full, brimming, burning with energy. Buffy had arrived, after decades of waiting... she was here.

Perhaps I had served my time, my pennance was over, perhaps I was finally free to love and live without shame.

Perhaps.

But I learned then that The world is cruel, and the powers that be play sick games. The closer I got to Buffy, the further fate carried her from me.

I had no idea how far.

...

The Buffy that entered Jessica's cafe seemed nothing like my Buffy. Her face was hardened and emotionless, her golden eyes distant, flicking from face to face, barely settling on mine. She closed the door behind her and pausing but for a moment, perhaps to gather herself, before she turned and strode over to the table around which we all sat.

The room stilled, all the Quileute elders, Jane Volturi, The Chief of Police, the pack leaders, all fell silent before this woman, the warrior, and waited.

And though she had filled my world since that first, glorious vision, like the sun rising upon my life for the first time, this Buffy cast her shadow over us all. This Buffy had brought the war to Forks.

I did not know this Buffy.

And it terrified me.


	3. Far Sight

Chapter 2

Far Sight

I have no memory of being a mortal. Ironic, perhaps, that I can see forward but not backwards. I am the inverse of everyone around me.

Time slides differently for me too. I picture it like glaciers, smooth and still and stretching to the horizon at times, but suddenly cracking, rising, falling and crashing inside my skull, and as the white pain fades, my eyes take in a new landscape to which I have no compass or map.

I had three constant truths. One: my need for blood, my burning, consuming thirst that pinned me to a moment like a squirming bug on a needle. Two: my face in the mirror- that never agung, never changing, pixie face, carved from ice with faded gold eyes (that bore my occasional sins with a red veil). And three: the girl who would be mine.

I am sitting in Esme's car in this time and this moment. The meeting over, tempers freyed, emotions running high, everyone is heading to their cars.

They know now that war is coming to Forks. That vampires from all over the world will be gathering here to make their last stand against The Slayer and The Gift Stealer. And what all that means for the sleepy town of Forks? The truth of it is sinking in like fangs.

Jessica has locked up, leaving Buffy and Charlie talking outside in the dim light of the moon. I say 'talking', but few words are exchanged. Buffy says that is how it has always been with her and her father.

Finally, without an embrace, Charlie takes his leave of his daughter, and Buffy stands alone. I am about to call to Buffy when her attention falls across the way, to the darkened building next to the cafe. A huge, black metal wolf stands guard outside the wooden structure. Buffy walks to it, hand extended to tenderly stroke the snow from its muzzle.

I know who made it. I know what it represents.

I stab my finger onto the car horn and startle her. She looks up confused for a moment, before striding slowly over to where I wait.

She glanced back at the wolf before she got into the passenger seat. She didn't say a word.

And so we sat there. The silence stretched on, a mere tickling sound of tumbling snowflakes brushing against the glass. Neither of us breathed, nor shifted, our hearts lay still. Time distorts in moments like these, stretches out to the horizon. Like glaciers out to the horizon.

"What have I done?" She said, and at first I thought I imagined it.

I didn't say anything. What could I say? I wasn't Edward, I couldn't see into her mind. Not that even he could, when her strength was at its greatest. I tried to read her face, but she was a blank page.

Buffy looked at me then, as if for the first time in aeons. Her golden eyes catching the moonlight in a manner so inhuman, yet so utterly human my heart clenched in my chest. I reached for her hand, but she drew it away.

"You did what you had to do to defend us." I said.

"And you agree?"

"You should have talked to me first."

"Why? You know this is the only way to defeat Diana."

"Is it?" I said. She glared back at me. "Buffy, I need to ask. What Sue said. Was she right?"

"You mean, did I plan for the vampires arriving here to trigger more wolves being called?"

"Did you?"

Buffy's gaze hardened further, burning into me. She swallowed and looked back out into the night.

"Emily said the future depends on an alliance between our people."

"So it's true. You did. You set the stage of our last stand in Forks deliberately."

Buffy was silent.

"You told me once you resented being called as The Slayer. That it was forced on you. And yet, you did the same thing to those-"

"Spare me, Alice." She snapped. "This is war. We don't get the luxury to sit on the sidelines. We fight, or we die. I didn't make this decision, it was Diana. Or are you gonna blame me for that too."

"You wanted to know the truth, Buffy. You wanted to know what I saw."

_That it is you that beheads Rosalie in battle, that it is your hands that tear Emmett's heart from his chest. And more, and darker deeds still I dare not voice._

Ice cracking and shifting. The future jagged and perilous. Decisions sliding into place, tearing up my world.

"And what future do you see now?" She says.

I shook my head and swallowed back the bitter taste of my blood where my stray fang catches on my lower lip when I get angry.

"I can't see the future when I am with you." I said. Her gift, her Slayer powers, designed to foil the gifts of my kind, to allow her to slip unseen into our world to destroy us, block mine, blind me.

Buffy huffs and pops the car door.

"Well, let me help you with that." She says, and before I can reach for her, she is gone.

And I am alone again. And for the first time since I saw that glorious vision in 1922, I am not entirely sure it is a bad thing.


	4. The Others

Chapter 3

The Others

Veronique is Veronica now. The flapper long gone, she appears to all the world as an art school drop out, the embroidery of her cheap jeans unraveling, the faded ironic tourist shirt from Seacrest, the braids in her hair. But under the sparkling new lingo is the same Machiavellian mind, the same spider mind sitting at the center of the great web she has spun, touching the threads, feeling the world out, waiting, knowing. I have seen Veronique lay her traps, I have seen her feed.

Veronica sits crossed legged next to Willow, their eyes fixed on the computer screen. They don't know it, but their eyes scan in synchronicity, their brows twitch at the same information. Both do not like what they see.

I kind of hoped when they started problem solving together that a romance would bloom, after all, they were both equally twisted. I knew how Willow confused Buffy, how she would flirt. Rosenberg was insidious, oozing her way into our life, into the cracks, widening them. She and Veronica deserve each other.

But to my disappointment there was no sparks I could see, bar the friction of intellectual sparring. Willow, with all her sensuality and sugary words remained a thorn in my relationship with Buffy.

_You want to talk about it? _Edward says in my mind.

_I said no. Don't be a butt head today Deadwood, I am not remotely in the mood._

_They are reading about the New Orleans Coven._

_The news is not good, I take it?_

_They were wiped out. All but for Jessica._

_I thought Penelope would outlive us all. Damn. Who is Jessica? Have we met?_

_Fledgeling. Barely a year. She will be here soon enough. You really should talk to someone Alice, Esme could talk to Buf-_

_Edward, enough. Just leave it alone._

Willow looked up at me with a frown. I swear sometimes she can hear us. She draws in a breath to speak.

"So… New Orleans is like…"

"I know." I say, perhaps a little too sharply.

"Well, of course you do." Willow slips back defensively into that sickly, sarcastic drawl. I want to claw her smug face off and stomp on it. She grins, her orange-y, near golden eyes glinting mischievously and says "but do you know where Buffy is, right now? Who she is with?"

I spin on my heels and storm out.

_Willow regrets saying that, she is embarrassed now. _Edward thinks.

_Yeah, well, I am sick of her emotional backflips too. I am going hunting. I want to kill something. A lot._

I didn't. I just walked. I needed to be away from them all. Edward, Willow and The broken remains of The Volturi Guard who now haunted my home. And I confess, Rosalie and Emmett. Because looking at them tore at my heart. I knew they would die soon, and how. And I could not bare to tell them.

I thought of _Penelope _of the New Orleans coven, morose and melancholic, alone, even in company. When I sheltered in her court during the second world war, I pitied her. But I understood her now. So she was dust, and perhaps I would soon be too.

"Alice?"

I turned to see Emily Young, the fledgling Makah girl, lying stretched out along a fallen tree trunk, her pale bronze flesh glowing against the dark moss. She wore denim shorts and a torn old grey t-shirt stained and flecked with fresh blood.

"Sorry, it is Alice, right? I suck at names, and there are just so many new faces to learn." She said, drawing herself up to her hands.

I nodded, and seeing no reason to wander away, sat down on a mossy rock across from her.

"You're, like, Buffy's girl, right?" She said, her vocal fry resonating in strange way to my ear. I realized then what her accent was. Forks born yes, but infused with Valley girl. Emily had spent time in California.

"How is hunting going?" I said, avoiding the question. I knew Buffy and Esme where at La Push. That she was going to visit her. The wolf girl who imprinted on her. I wasn't invited, and that burnt like the Ward of Saint Dymphna.

"Hunting? Oh. Easy as pie. It's not new to me. Besides, I have had, like, a whole lifetime of preparation for this."

"Ah yes. The crow." I said.

"You don't believe me either?" She said.

"Actually I totally get it. I am gifted too. I have visions of the future."

"Sucks, doesn't it?" She said with a chuckle. She stretches her limbs up gracefully, popping the joints with satisfaction. "That gothy one does too, doesn't she?"

"Drusilla." I said. I hadn't seen the woman in question for a while. She moved silently through the house, appearing suddenly and vanishing as you looked away. It wasn't teleportation, it was like she danced on the edge of your awareness.

"I wondered… and, like, totally say I am out of line here if I am… but she is like stone cold crazy, right?"

"Well, as you say, she is just like us. Only she can't separate visions from reality. To some that looks like madness. Right?"

"But you have your head screwed on right. I am not going to end up like her, am I?"

"Do you see any of us having a future to be mad in?" I said, and for that instant I felt like I was Pandora speaking.

Emily shrugged. "Hey, I just talk to spirits in my visions, Ally." She said. "I am the psychic equivalent of doctor Doolittle."

"Ally?"

"Not cool? I mean, you can call me Em, I don't mind."

"Okay, sure Em." I said. She smiled broadly, and nodded. "Can I ask, do you think an alliance between the wolfpack and Immortals is possible?"

"Possible? Yes. Easy?" She shrugs. "I love Sam, but he is stubborn as a log and quick to anger. And now there are more wolves than he can handle? It's probably good that Jacob broke off to form a second pack, but keeping those two from each other's throats? Gonna be work."

"And we are about to throw even more immortals into that powderkeg."

"Hey, I am not sure what it's worth, but I gave my life to make this happen. Like, literally. So if you need someone who believes, I'm your girl."

"Thank you." I said. Emily tilted her head to catch my gaze.

"You don't see how this is going to end, do you?"

"Not yet. My gifts rely on decisions. Right now too many decisions that affect the outcome are happening. I don't know who is coming to fight with us. I don't know where Diana is- she has a Slayer with her, so I cannot see past that."

"Then, not much you can do til it all settles." Emily said, picking at her bloody shirt. "Say, I saw a pool back down the way with this rad waterfall. How about a swim? They say, clean the body, clean the mind, right?"

"I… I'm not sure, I…"

"Come on Ally, let's enjoy the calm before the storm."

If I could tell you anything about Emily Young, it is this. Her smile can carry you off in strange directions.


	5. Slipping

Chapter 4

Slipping

Buffy span through the air, legs crashing down onto Jasper's surprised face, sending him into the snow covered dirt for the third time with such force the metallic sound rang out through the winter trees.

The gathered vampires watched in awe, and in fear. Few had seen a Slayer. But not a one had seen a Slayer like this, because Buffy was like no other of her kind, forged like none before her into a living weapon by the very woman who was coming to kill us all. The Volturi mad ordered her perfected. And now that sin stood before us, impossibly fast, impossibly strong.

"Can we talk?" Veronica said. Her eyes flicked over to Edward and back to mine. I nodded and we withdrew to a safe distance from my brother's gift.

Another sickening crunch rang out, and a sharp intake of breath from the audience. I glanced up to see both Santiago and Heidi spiralling away from a seemingly motionless Buffy. They landed hard.

"Okay." I said. She shifted awkwardly, wrestling with whatever was on her mind. "Just say it, V. I am a big girl now."

"No, it's not about that". She meant about Buffy and the wolf bitch. She knew things about everyone, could follow the threads, that was her gift. "It's Willow. She is hiding something."

I huffed out frustratedly. Our world is ending and still these childish games. I glanced back the the red head, sitting at the edge of the gathering. Not Volturi, not yet Cullen, (not really) she hovered at the edge of our world.

"Aren't we all?"

"No. Something important. Something definitely not of the good."

"Well then, a mystery for you to solve. I am happy for you."

"Oh, come on. It's me, Alice. I already solved it. I know what she is hiding, I just need you to know that she is hiding it." Veronica said. I eyed her cautiously. "Remember that prophecy Buffy asked her to track down? The "three who see" thing? Well, she found it. A few days ago by the looks of things. She translated it too."

"What did it say?"

"Well, that's where my whole "Willow is hiding something" comes in. She dumped the whole damn project in a hole up on the north ridge and torched it."

"Did she tell Buffy?"

"I kept tabs. Willow hasn't been near Buffy. Nor Jane, Esme or anyone else." Veronica taps her skull "She has just kinda shut up shop here."

"Edward hasn't read her?"

"Maybe. Does he keep secrets?"

He can read everyone's thoughts. Of course he keeps secrets.

"So why tell me?" I said. I wondered what Veronica was up to now, and was determined not to be a cog in her machinations again.

"Well, I… just needed to talk. I kinda count you as on my side. We go way back, right?"

I felt awful, and closed my eyes, what was wrong with me? Veronica was my friend, and had been since 1920s. Why was I feeling so defensive around her? Around everyone?

Another metallic crunch, and I looked over to where Buffy stood victorious over the fallen Volturi Guard.

"Here endeth the lesson" she said.

…

I never imagined when I heard tales of the succubi that I would actually one day be on first name terms with them. Let alone helping them shop for an outfit for my brother's wedding.

But that isn't now. That was a future, and that future has slid to the side, perhaps never to return. Perhaps.

I am getting time lost again.

The now? Now, it is the winter of 1994, and I am standing in the drive of our home in Forks, waiting to greet The Denali Clan. The three sisters who spawned the legends of the succubi.

Lovers, seducers, devourers of men.

Oh, they have a new Volvo. It's nice.

No. I am wrong. The world slides again.

I am sitting in the office listening to Carlisle talking to The Denali clan on speaker phone. Buffy is scowling across from me, unhappy with what she is hearing.

"With all due respect, again, they are not werewolves. I know, I met one. And you know what? He is brave enough to help his friends, which puts that werewolf head and shoulders above you all." She slams her fist on the table, stands and storms out of the room. I have no interest in following her.

"Kate, Buffy has left the room." Carlisle says, rubbing his brow.

"Fine, maybe we can talk like adults now." Tanya's voice comes through the speakers.

"Maybe." Carlilse lets slip, but then he straightens up and is back to the patriarch once more. "I think we should all take a break. Please, think on it."

Esme is at my side as soon as the phone goes down. She has my hand.

"You saw something? Are you okay?"

I shook my head and waved a finger in the air.

"It's nothing, just a little out of sych s'all." I said.

"Should I go up there? Talk to them in person?" Edward says.

Edward was there too, I hadn't noticed him. Wow, my brain was scrambled. Time, Alice. Breathe. Find where you are right now.

"No." Carlisle sighed "Not while the power struggle within Jane's ranks is going on. We need you here."

"So Buffy's little display didn't work?" I said.

"Jasper's not the only troublemaker. They feel abandoned by The Volturi. Angry, lost, insulted." Esme said. I stood on wobbly feet with her assistance.

"I think I need to hunt" I said, and left the room.

…

Buffy was destroying a tree when I passed her, her claw hands tearing apart the wood with little resistance. She was burning all her rage out upon it, but as it fell and shattered she blazed still.

She didn't notice me slip past.

She didn't notice me at all.


	6. Shift

Chapter 5

Shift

Willow looked confused when I approached her and seized her hand. Without a word, I dragged her from the computer, out through the glass doors and into the snow.

She fell in step, her brow furrowed, her stiff fingers loosening in my grasp.

"This a date?" She purred.

"Shut it Rosenberg, I am on my last nerve." I said, but I did not release her hand.

"So where are we going." She said. I just pulled her along. She seemed perfectly fine with holding my hand, and strangely, it didn't feel strange at all. Like a memory. She chuckled and swung our clasped hands playfully. Childlike, innocent games to her. How split in two she was.

But then, as we began the climb up the ridge, she must have realised where I was taking her. Only then I felt the resistance in her hand. She tried to stop us, to pull us away but it was like the strength fell away from her. I pulled her onwards, to the scene of her crime.

"Please, don't" She said, weakly. "Please."

I was practically dragging her by the time we got to the pit she had dug. The snow covered it, but the stench of burnt paper and plastic still hung in the air.

I finally went to release her hand, but she was clutching mine now, her other hand came to join it. She gazed down into the small pit with a nauseated, haunted look.

I felt her trembling. Felt her press against me, the warm buzz of her body against mine.

"Alice." She whispered through shaking lips, her eyes rimmed red. "Take me away from here. Please. I promise, I will do anything."

"You know I see things." I said. "Why hide?"

"You haven't seen it, Alice. You haven't heard her. If you had, you wouldn't make me. Wouldn't… please… just…"

"I need answers Willow." I said. She gazed at me with glassy eyes.

Then...

Her lips where on mine, hot and salty. Fingers curled about my face, warm against the snow bitten air. And comfort filled me, for the first time since… oh, time is so hard to grasp. I melted into the kiss, familiar and new all at the same time. A memory? A vision? I sank in, losing myself, drawing her into a deeper kiss. Her groan vibrated through me as my tongue slid across hers.

Mine. Home. Safe. Time. Warm. Belong. Time. Time. Time! Alice!

Her hands slide over my neck, wrapping around me, and I draw her in closer. My love. My Willow. How long has it been? When did we?

Wait.

This isn't right. I am slipping again.

Wait.

Buffy?

I pull back, confused and burning with shame. Willow gazed at me, her pale face flushed and dreamlike. She stepped back, a hand rising to the mouth, wiping at the thin trail of blood.

I tasted her. Rich and salty, sparking on my tongue, delicious, wrong.

"Willow, I'm… what? I feel lost. Where? We weren't supposed to be like this yet. Were we?"

"It's growing, isn't it? I thought we were safe this far but it's… she… we need to run, Alice. The Hellmouth… "

"From beneath us, it devours." I say, the words coming to me like from a vision. "But you knew. You know…" I look down at the small pit and it reminds me of why we where here. "The prophecy, Willow. Tell me."

"You don't understand. It wasn't a prophecy. It was a spell. It was a trap."

"What did you do?"

"It's in motion now, the three who see... three seers on the juncture or three rivers. Trivia? Don't you see? Forks. Trivia. Diana. It was the plan, all along."

A darkness blew through me, and willow looked up at the sky, cowering. She pulled me close again, burying her head into my neck, mewling nonsense. I wanted to wrap her up, protect her, run with her. Like we have together a hundred times, running and running as the hunter comes. I fall into a vision, my skull full of screams and ecstasies, of my lover Willow and I holding each other, hunting and running, over and over as the darkness spread over the wastes of what was once Civilization.

No. That isn't past. Isn't present. It's sliding again, and I am lost. Where am I now? Who is in my arms? Buffy? I remember Buffy. When she died. When my stake found her black heart over the ashes of my family.

Buffy.

I see her now, naked, her face filled with bliss as I make love to her. The scorching heat of her mortal body as my fangs pierce her throat, sending her over the edge. The love in her burning for me as my venom steals her life away.

Shift. Shift. Crack. Shuffle.

"Buffy?"

Pain. My skull feels torn apart, like the wolves have seized me. Torn apart like Tara Maclay.

Shift.

A warm summer's day, the california sunlight falling on two mortal woman standing in a bedroom... Of Willow and Tara, human, smiling, in love.

A gunshot and blood on a shirt, and the world shifts again.

I am staring at a crater, a town falling into a hole, The Scythe in my hand. I look down as my entire past slides away, my sister asks me a question and for once I feel free. I smile.

Shift.

I am lying in the snow, the cold ground at my back. Willow has long gone, her scent fading, but the taste of her blood on my lips.

I try to sit up, try to let time suffuse into me once more. I am Alice Cullen. Yes, I am Alice Cullen and it is late December in 1994.

I know this time. I know this place. It is exactly one week before it happens.

It is one week before the world ends.


	7. Super Massive Black Hole

Chapter 6

Supermassive Black Hole

The snow fall has picked up speed as I staggered and tumbled my way down the ridge, and it added to my confusion, the sparkling white flakes like television static, hissing into my migraine, making everything seem even more intangible and surreal.

Worse to me though was the chilling, crawling sensation, which seemed to flow through the very landscape around me. The knotted, twisted green boughs seemed like claws, the vibrant tangle of great roots seemed like immense tentacles. I felt dwarfed, no, swallowed by some immense, eldritch beast.

I fought my weakened body through the tangling ferns and growing drift, my blood still shallow in my veins from where I let Buffy drain me.

_Edward. Help me._

I could hear no response, maybe I was lost. Maybe everything was lost. But I kept hope, and staggered on. Because I am confused and in pain, so perhaps I could not hear him because of all the imagery crashing about in my mind.

_Edward_!

My outer world was all static snow and beastial trees. My inner? Realities grinding against each other like immense tectonic plates. The vibrations shaking me from this time stream. I fought to stay linear, to stay on the path. I heard the call of crows through the trees, the sound of my ice frosted legs feet piercing snow.

I was weak, weakening to the point of greying out. Buffy's words came to me, as did the taste of Willows blood on my lips.

_What have I done?_

Finally I fell, but strong arms caught me. I let free a groan of joy. Edward. My brother had found me!

"Trivia. The three. Veronica get her… three rivers." I managed. I was frustrated at how disjointed my words came, how disjointed everything was. "Prophecy. Three seers. Three rivers. Veronica search… Trivia. End. World. Tell me. Tell me you understand."

"Course I do, deary." A voice came. "I know this all like that which flows through my veins."

"Drusilla?"

"Shhhh now childe, someone's lips have been naughty. Can't have naughty lips in times like these. One big, bad mouth is enough. But two is a treat."

"Willow… she…" I felt my soaked and weak body being laid down on a jagged rock floor. I fought to stand, but a powerful clawed hand held me at my chest.

"Oh now, don't you worry. Grand Auntie will be snugly tucked up as you, real soon. Both of you to bed. You still get supper but you won't taste it."

"Drusilla, please… " I said, all but a hoarse whisper. "Please… must..."

I saw the vial then, she produced it from her petticoats and waved it before me like a treat. And to my horror, I knew it was The Irkalla poison that had been buried with the corpses of the mercenaries. She dipped her talon into the thick treacle within, and with a gleeful giggle places it to the tender part where my throat meets my jaw.

"Drusilla…"

"Once. Perhaps. But I am like Little Miss Edith now, head twisted so I can't see the games." She said, her face falling. Her razor claw pressed into my flesh. "But I have a shred of decency left. I shall bury your body now, little Mary. Deep under the snow were the worms would play. It's overdue."

"No! Please… no."

"Sweet little Mary Alice Brandon, do say hi to daddy for me."

She thrust, and agony erupted through me. I heard my flesh part, the tinny grinding as her finger worked its way deep inside my skull. The sickly chemical sensation followed, heavier and darker than before.

I slid from the time stream, the static filling me, the weakness became warm comfort. All was glaciers melting in the dead of night. No map, no compass. But I needed none where I was going.

My soul felt hot, blazing hot, rippling through me, burning up my body.

I felt sucked down. Down towards into something massive and inescapable.

Drusilla sang me a lullaby as she dug into the earth.


	8. Jackson

Chapter 7

Jackson

Jackson State Hospital probably wasn't at all how you would picture a lunatic asylum.

I was fortunate I suppose, (if you stretched the meaning of the word) to have been born during a period of reform, a time when Dorothea Dix campaigned for a kinder way to treat the mad. A system called 'moral treatment' had swept aside the majority of the victorian cruelties, and so, the asylum where I found myself was fashioned in the Kirkbride style, with five buildings stepped in a manner to allow as much air and light in as possible. Had you looked down upon it, ironically, I suppose, it would look like the wing of a bat.

But for all the dreams of air and light, by the time my father institutionalized me, the greed had set into the system like rot. Politicians had pinched pennies and shuffled rules, so that geriatrics where classed as insane. Thus the state saved money, but the 'kind' moral treatment system bore the influx of patients. So, the staff were inexperienced, underpaid, grim faced and frustrated. The facilities stripped back and crumbling, the comfy lounges threadbare and vomit stained.

Of course, none of this really mattered to me, my mind was so broken, my nightmares so terrible, I guess you could say that I barely spent much time there at all. I was "away with the fairies". Had you had asked me then, the name of the facility, or the year, or even the state, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.

It had only been the year prior, when Buffy, still a mortal, had told me of her vision of me in the asylum. It was the puzzle peice I needed to trace my beginnings. Thanks to Buffy, I had found my real name, my birth family and the place where I was condemned.

Buffy had then vanished from my life, taking with her all my hopes and visions for our future, so I guess I turned to my past for some comfort, some answers to fill the Buffy shaped hole in me.

So I kissed my family goodbye and made my way south.

Memories fade, but when you are as old as I, reality fades also. I found that the Kirkbride buildings had been torn down long ago, replaced with a new facility. Still, that too seemed as picked at mercilessly by greedy fingers as its predecessor, and though I left with copies of the files I needed to trace my origins, I left feeling just as empty and depressed.

They must have wondered what inspired the sizable anonymous donation they received the next week. I guess I had hoped to put to rest the ghost of Jackson State Hospital forever.

I should have known ghosts can't die.

…

Pain white, brain screaming white, like the start. Like the beginning. Venom coursing through, burning, annihilating. Electro shock white. Spiking high white. Clean slate. Clean page. Reboot. Tabula rasa white.

The sudden need to breathe seized me and my hot lips spluttered black saliva as I drew greedy breaths in, scorching hot. Can't move away, the heat burning me, all around me, rushing through my veins. I want to claw at my skin to vent it, to let the heat out, let the ice back in.

"Mary Alice, mercy me!" Nurse Cox seized my wrists, pulling my hands, with my bloody nails from my arms. "Look what you have gone done to yourself, silly poppet."

My body quivered and bucked, shivering naked in the steaming hot bathwater, and I wretched the foul black foam onto the filthy chequered floor.

"Blanche, would you look at this mess."

"Yes, Matron."

"Blanche, don't just stare, get a mop"

"Oh." The young nurse said, ginger curls and ruddy faced. She stared at me with wide eyes before catching herself. "Right away matron." she said, ducking away out of my sight.

Strong arms lifted me clear of the water, and placed me down on a rough towel surface. My skin felt thin like tissue, my muscles no stronger than fern leaves.

"Fine time to have a turn little Mary Alice."

"Not... real." I managed.

"No, no, quite right." Nurse Cox said her southern accent mellow and thick with motherly kindness. She daubed at my face. "Good girl."

"Not again. Please. Not again."

And for only the second time in my memory, my eyes wept tears.

…

I was walking through a memory, a fabrication. I knew this. But it was real. Real as fingertips tracing cross the winter frosted bark on a Forks cedar. Real as my fangs sinking into flesh. Real as blood exploding across my tongue, salt sweet, thick and singing with life.

Real as the violence of Buffy's kisses as she came for me.

I could hear the buzz of fans chopping at the still, warm air. Lies. Feel the sweat beading on my fragile, mortal skin. Lies and more lies.

But are they lies? Because the lead paint on the window frame flakes under my scarred fingers, lodges under my bitten nails. Winter-Tree-Bark real.

Ironic I went back here for answers when I lost Buffy the first time. I lost her again and now I am trapped here.

I am walking, in this memory/reality, walking with slippered feet through the honey colored light and airy halls of Jackson State Hospital in 1920.

My cot was in room for two, long and wide with an arched window at one side that overlooked a lawn with a pink crape myrtle tree. The woodland beyond was strangely dark, and as I gazed at it, the shifting shadows made my mind itch and twist; I had to look away.

The plaster walls, painted thickly with canary yellow paint. The floors were cream linoleum, streaked grey from mop water.

I sat down and the bed felt familiar. The other bed was empty, but I knew this dream. For my torture, it would not be empty for long. She would be admitted soon.

After the hot bath where I first entered the matron had dressed me in a faded slip and dressing gown, shapeless and worn. It was now flecked with my own, human blood, as were the dressings on my arms where my nails had torn at my paper thin flesh. The blood should be singing to my senses, but it just smelled sharp and metallic when I lifted it to my nose. I knew licking at it would taste of ash. Everything here tasted of ash.

It was a dream, of course, the Irkalla poison flowing through me, building my own personal hell from my darkest days. I knew this. But the detail, oh the detail… and the sensation? Maddening real.

Buffy had fallen twice into this hell. Her own version of this, months in her mind. I had endured it but once.

But what option did I have? My only hope was someone out there would be able to find me.

Oh god, out there, she is burying me alive.


	9. Her

Chapter 8

Her

I don't remember this. I can't remember this. Everything before my turning was lost. And yet, everything here is so real, so solid. Nothing in the rooms I had explored was anything but tangible and crisply detailed. I must have wandered these halls, stared at these walls, sat in these lounges. The boredom, the emptiness, all etching the minute details into my mind.

Had I captured the position and shape of every freckle on Blanche McGrath's face? That nervous, wide eyed nurse? Every pore and hair?

She caught me staring at her and shifted awkwardly, tugging at her apron. One of her grey blue eyes had a fleck of brown in it. I did not look away. She wasn't real, after all.

The poor girl did not have the disposition to work in a place like this, she was far too sensitive, too open. Perhaps the years would harden her. Or, I should say, perhaps they had. because in the real world her vibrant ginger hair would long ago have turned grey. I guessed she would be in her early 90s, if she even made it this far.

I couldn't help but wonder at the immortal she could have been, had it been her, not I that Angelus had hunted. Another Victoria, perhaps? I couldn't imagine such a frail, doe like girl turned into a merciless predator. But I guess I had. We all have it in us.

Nurse McGrath had collected me from my room and, as instructed, sat dutifully watching over me until the psychiatrist would see me.

We sat silently in large square chairs of mahogany wood that felt impossibly hard against my flesh. Now and again, Blanche's eyes flicked to me, then down to my bandaged arms and back to the floor. Had we done this seven decades ago? Had she feared me then?

Or had I made her all up?

I could hear the soporific murmur of the alienist's voice through the wood as he talked to his patient. There was an arrogance to his tone, to his authority, that annoyed me. What did he know? Most of what he was certain to be fact was long ago debunked. They treated us with scorching hot baths and malaria, for Christ's sake.

Still, I knew that it would be best for me to play along with his illusions. Fiction as this all was, the sensations were painfully real. The disciplinary actions for any digression would still be torture to me. I had to get through this dream scape, survive until someone rescued me. I prayed Edward or Esme would sense me through the deep soil that hid my body.

Surely Buffy had noticed I had vanished?

Hadn't she?

I gasped as my nails punched through the skin of my palm, and it wasn't until that moment I realized how balled tight my fists were. Blanche looked at me curiously, I allowed a smile to flutter to my lips and hid my hand.

The heavy wooden door swung open to reveal the alienist, a portly man with shaved short hair and a long greying sagging moustache. He smiled curtly and nodded to the patient, a woman, who scurried out the far door at such a speed that I couldn't recognise her.

"Ms. Brandon. Do come in." He said.

…

His office reminded me of Carlilse's somewhat, although I clearly had not modelled it on it. The furniture was antique, the rich red polished wood not quite sitting right in the white painted, airy room. It was narrow, box like, but with a high ceiling and an impressive arch window just like the one in my room. A french door that opened out to the same landscape. It made me uncomfortable that it was wide open, that somehow that thin barrier of glass protected me from something out there. Something in the shifting shadows of the tree line. I nervously edged into the room, and he shut the door behind me.

"Such fine weather we are having, don't you think?" He said.

"A little warm for my liking." I said, resting my hands on the back of the chair, one still balled up and bleeding. "Could you perhaps turn on the fan?"

He eyed me curiously, his moustache twitching. He adjusted the fan to aim it at the chair and flicked on the switch. The cool breeze was a mercy on my burning flesh. He sat down and observed me in silence for a moment.

"Tell me Alice, what year is it?"

"1920." I lied.

"And your name?"

"Mary Alice Brandon. I prefer you call me Alice."

Again that curious look. Twitch. He gestured for me to sit, and I warily did so. I say warily, as that door was open and I could feel the darkness in the trees tugging at my nerves.

"Very well, Alice. Can you tell me where you are?"

_Buried in the frozen ground of Forks._

"Jackson State Hospital. Juno Wing."

"Well, I never." He smiled. "Do you remember me?"

"Doctor Pendergast, the Alienist." I said.

"Can you tell me why you did that to your arms?"

"The hydro therapy doesn't agree with me. The heat makes me itch something fierce. It's infuriating. Barbaric. I much prefer the cold. Guess, ny nails must be need trimming, s'all."

"I see. So you were not trying to harm yourself?"

"Why would any sane person try to harm themselves?" I said.

"Do you think yourself sane?"

"I have seizures, Doctor. They are confusing and painful. But I am not insane."

"You claim to see visions of the future."

"Merely intense images- a symptom of my seizures. When I was a child I had no way to explain it. My only frame of reference was what people said. They called me a witch child, called my fits visions. By happenstance some of what I saw came to pass, purely by coincidence and chance, of course. I guess it frightened them."

"I see. How old are you?"

"I… guess around nineteen."

"You guess?"

"It's so numbingly dull in here, Doctor, time moves differently. It seems pointless to mark the days. I may have had a birthday, I may not."

He sat for a moment, staring at me with an expressionless face. Then he turned and made some notes with a black fountain pen. I watched the black ink sink into the paper with a sense of nausea.

"Have we met before?"

"Of course. Once a week." I said, confidently, since my last poisoning had me playing this same game.

"So, you remember our meeting last week?"

"I… uh… of course."

"Can you tell me what we spoke about? What you told me?"

I swallowed heavily. I didn't want to go back into the scalding baths, or endure fever treatment. I had to play the suddenly recovered. The sane girl, the saved.

"My memory isn't very good, I must confess. Refresh it for me?"

"You sat there. I here. And you spoke of your visions. Do you recall?"

I shook my head, deflated.

"And you told me about how your step mother had murdered your mother. How your father knew and put you in here to silence you."

I snorted a laugh, waving it away as trivial nonsense. But the revelation sat like Drusilla's talon to my throat, pressing in. _Mother. Murder. Step mother._ I felt the tip working it's way into my skull, puncturing into a place locked deeply inside me.

Chills speckled my back, and I sat sharply upright to fight them off. My wounds throbbed on my arms and palm. _Murder_. I glanced away from the man, out into to the gardens. I felt sickness boiling in my gut, and fought back the urge to scream away the images.

_Lillian_. _Murder_. _Protect Cynthia._

"Tell me about your father."

"I…" I stammered at this, my eye locking on the tree line once again, to something just beyond the darkness, out of sight. "My father? I… what would you like to know?"

"How do you feel about him?"

I shrugged.

"And your stepmother?"

"My… uh…"

I tried to pull my eyes free from the trees, to glance at the doctor, but I found myself unable.

"Alice?"

"I… I mean… step mother. I… in what way? How do I feel about my…"

Amongst those dread shadows something was forming. Gathering. And I was overwhelmed by the feeling it was coming for me.

"Alice?" He said. "Alice?" Again.

It was a figure, forming at the very edge of my vision.

"Do you still believe your mother was murdered?"

I shuddered as the shadow stepped from the tree line. Sharp and real. It was a woman, long limbed and elegant, with bronze skin and black hair. She wore a long suit jacket, blouse and skirt in a lustrous black taffeta that shimmered in the sunlight. Upon her head was a black cloche hat, and about her neck a long string of white beads that she coiled around unnaturally long fingers.

The woman strode across the lawn, her long legs slicing through the hazy air like swords into flesh.

"Alice?"

I felt pressed into the chair, unable to move in my… terror? Yes, it was terror. I felt the razor trickle down my nerves, holding me in place like prey. And it grew, as the woman closed in. Somehow, she seemed to leap closer with each blink of my eye, so I held my gaze wide, shivering at what I saw coming for me.

A woman formed from the ungraspable stuff of nightmares.

"Alice, I must insist you… oh…" the alienist turned to see the woman too, which only made her all the more real to me. He seemed to shrink away, and vanished from my periphery. My attention was solely on the woman now.

She stood at the doorway, not crossing the threshold, eyes black with kohl, a sharp smile on her lips. She appeared in her late forties, thin, severe. The fine wrinkles around her eyes chewed at her makeup, pulling it into the grooves. One hand pressed against the glass casually, splaying like spider. The other, coiling through what I could now see is a necklace of carved ivory skulls.

"Alice." She said, her voice purring and smokey, her accent strange and ancient. "Finally. I have been so looking forward to meeting you."


	10. Past Tense

Chapter 9

Past Tense

I can't explain exactly the sensation that bled through me then, but it was like every cell, every hair, every drop of fluid within me seemed to come blazing alive in _Her_ presence.

Alive. As in mortal.

Suddenly, and irrevocably mortal.

And to a vampire with no real memory of mortality, it was like my entire world was screaming.

This was not the stuff of dreams anymore, because _She_ was not made of dreams. _She_ was the other thing. And _She_ was here, with me, within me, surrounding me, flooding my blood like… oh…

...and it came to me then, a memory of flesh and agony… white hot and yet beyond that, the sensation of a vampire's venom remaking me as I lay convulsing on that cold chapel floor, flooded and matted with straw and broken glass.

I lay at his feet and watched as he loomed over me, his pale, beautiful face twisted in rage at his prize being stolen from him. That was my last image before the keeper's venom took me to my death. And I cursed it as I did him.

Angelus had curated my death. Spent months coming to my window, whispering, telling me tales of atrocities he had committed, of the artful tortures he would bestow upon me, how he would take my body in every way possible, stripping away my innocence, my sanity (what little was left), my virginity and my blood.

He told me of the horrors I would commit after he drank from for me. That I would be like him soon, when the storm hit its peak and the world was as dark as my soul would be.

And my visions told me he did not lie.

Angelus never lied to me.

I had tried to run away, of course, but the staff had stopped me, lashed me to the bed with leather straps 'for my own good'.

"You desire that nurse, don't you, little Mary Alice?" He said one night. "I see your dirty little glances, your lecherous looks. Do they know of your depravity? What you want to do to women? You want her like only a man should want her, don't you?"

I felt my stomach drop as the memory came to me. The real Blanche McGrath wasn't out there growing grey. I knew this now, I remembered. I remembered.

What he did to her.

I felt bile rising in my throat, my body trembling, and I tried to close my eyes. But how do you close your eyes to a memory?

The scuttlebutt around the ward was Nurse McGrath's sudden disappearance was due to her becoming 'in the family way'. One of the doctors, no doubt, had taken advantage of her weak disposition.

I knew the bloody truth. It started with me choking on a sandwich. Gazing in horror as I pulled the long, matted ginger locks from my throat.

He left parts of her for me. Small parts that I would discover in my bed, in my pockets, in my coffee and food. I would scream and rush for the staff, but of course the evidence would be gone by the time they came.

They bound me to the bed more often than not, and, as my screams and begging grew, my visions came faster and stronger, thicker and more painfully vivid. Ice cracking and shifting. Sanity and insanity. No compass. No map. Cracking and shifting like tortured bones.

The moonlight shimmered off his wet, white flesh as he leered at me through the window. Rising winds whipped at trees behind him, tumbling blossom across the yard; the sickly scraping sound of snapped branches across the courtyard as the night howled.

Razor fingernails tap, tap, tapping at the glass.

"She is gone now. Dead as your dear heart." He said, a small, beautiful smile parted his lips, "But I wanted you to know, that it was because of you. And my sweet, sweet Alice, I made her scream your name with her last breath."

And I screamed too. I screamed and screamed until they dragged me into the darkness, binding me tight, strapping a bar of gnawed, bitter wood between my teeth and closing off the world from me. It was a small mercy.

I remember him. I remember her. I remember.

God, help me, I remember it all.

I woke up, neck stiff, lips slick with black foam. My face was pressed against a canvas pad, the sharp smell of it filling my nostrils. My body was throbbing steadily, and I realised it was my heart beat. I drew in a sticky, bitter breath and moaned at my discomfort.

I managed to shift upright, pins and needles lit up the nerves in my right arm. How long had I been asleep? How long had I been in here?

I craned my neck from side to side until I felt the blood flowing, releasing a happy little whimper when a delicious pop sent pleasure through me.

I tried to get my bearings. Not just place but time. This room was obviously the big hospital papa and his viper bitch had buried me in, so that meant mom was dead and buried. That meant I was alive. That meant it was the present, not a vision. Sure felt strange though.

So the year was 1920, but what day and what time?

The light from the viewing slot was flickering. I could hear a storm building in the distance and no doubt the lines had gone down again. They would be running on one of those big gas generators the groundskeeper had taken the time to show me on my wanderings. He was always good to me. That poor old generator would barely keep up, so it would be sputtering and dying all night. So, I guessed it was night. This room was one of the few not opening out to windows and skylights. Like a great greenhouse for growing lunatics.

"What you cackling over?" A girl's voice came, the thick New York accent seemed out of place somehow "care to share?"

I tried to explain the joke, but the bit in my mouth muffled it.

"Great, the only person to yammer to 'round here and they gone and gagged you up like a greyhound." She said.

I figured she was in the cell across from me. Despite my restraints I managed to work my way up the wall to standing, and get to the metal slit.

I now had another bearing. The three isolation rooms where in the west most part of the wing, and as the exit to the ward proper was to my right, I was facing north. With that measure, I felt the hospital settling in around me in my mind. Biloxi was behind me and far away, in all respects.

"Why the muzzle, toots? You a biter?" The girl said, her face partially visible through her own slit. "you look like a biter."

"Fits" I managed to say around the wooden bit. "'Stops me swallowing my tongue" She winced and sneered at this.

"How positively awful." She said, and then looked away with a bored expression. Then a wicked little smile appeared on her perfect bow lips. "I stabbed an orderly with his pencil."

I must confess, there was something about her face that instantly captivated me, her dark brown hair cut in the ultra modern flapper style, the wonky smile and slightly misaligned teeth, the long proud nose with little flared ridges at either side and hazel eyes which, unlike the rest of those belonging to the patients here, were still blazing with youth.

"I'm Alice. Brandon." I mumbled over the bit. "Well, s'short for Mary Alice."

She smiled that charming smile and returned to staring back out into the ward.

"You?" I said.

"Wait? You don't know who I am?" I shook my head. Why should I? She turned her attention back to me, her brow raised in curiosity. "I thought everyone here knew."

"Sorry."

"No, it's refreshing. I"m Buffy. Well, Elizabeth's what mother called me, but that is frightfully dull, don't you think?" Buffy leaned forward like she was telling a ghost story at a campfire. "The papers like to call me The Meridian Slayer. Watcha think of that then Alice?"

"Don't get t'read much here." I confessed. "I like Buffy. It suits you."

She seemed baffled for a moment, considering me with her hazel eyes, but then a knowing smile came to her lips.

"How curious". She said. "What they got you locked up here for?"

"They think I am mad."

Buffy's smile became radiant, and I felt my heart flutter.

"Yeah. Me too."

...

I was led back to my room the following morning by a nurse I was unfamiliar with.

I was given a glass of prune juice with potassium bromide before being allowed to rest. It tasted of ashes, but I managed to swallow it down. Frankly, it tasted better than the foul black foam around the bit. I felt hungry, thirsty for something... but the idea of eating anything made me nauseated. It was quite the frustrating dilemma, so I focused on trying to sleep instead.

My bed felt so soft by comparison to the cell, that by all rights I should have slept soundly, but the heat of the day was rising and I found little rest except dozing. At about noon I became aware of two nurses preparing the bed across from me, whispered gossip and hushed snickering. One caught me watching and became stern faced, elbowing her companion.

"Got anything sharp around the place Mary Alice? Best give it up now for your own safety."

I shook my head but grinned at the realisation that Buffy would be sharing the room with me. I guess the nurse didn't believe me, she just shrugged.

"Your funeral" she said with a smirk.

At five Buffy appeared at the doorway, flanked by the matron and a thug of an orderly. She seemed tiny by comparison, no taller than I, and her demeanor was quite different from our last encounter. She seemed exhausted, frail and sheepish. Her clothes where exquisite, but ripped and stained- a pearl colored dress cut shockingly high, exposing her smooth, taut muscled legs.

She made her way to the bed and sat down, listening to the rules the matron reeled off, answering with little nods here and there.

To my disappointment, she didn't look at me once. When the matron and her monkey left, Buffy lay upon the bed and turned away from me. It didn't take me long to realise she was silently sobbing to herself.

That night the air was hot and still, charged with static from the distant lightning storms. The Cicadas were strangely silent.

I glanced over to the girl across from me. Sad, intelligent eyes sparkled back at me in the darkness. She was awake and staring at me in a curious way.

"I wish you were real" she whispered.

I sighed, and closed my eyes.

Yeah, me too. I thought.


	11. Thingamajigger

Chapter 10

Thingamajigger

The grounds keeper was a strange fellow. I call him the 'grounds keeper' but I am sure he had some other title, I never asked. He was always there, always somewhere in the background, working quietly and calmly, his strong hands fixing this or that, tending plants, oiling windows, pushing carts. He could have perfectly blended into that same backdrop if it wasn't for the fact he was an albino.

His flesh was shockingly pale, like marble, and his eyes the hue of fresh blood. At first he scared me, there was something about that dead white and red combination that reminded me all too much of finding my the body of my mother, Lillian. But he always had a calming smile and a wink for me that somehow told me to stay strong.

He alone believed me about my visions, and in the quiet moments he would bring me trinkets. A touch would send my mind dancing forward, and I would tell him tales of those who owned them. He would smile and take every word as truth.

I asked his name but he said it wouldn't matter. And the strange thing is that he never appeared in my visions. I never saw his future.

* * *

The humid air had grown hot over the next week, trapped under the hovering storm clouds that loomed over us, all black-blue like bruises.

I grew weak in the heat, panting and pawing away the sweat from my sticky skin. I longed for rain, for that breaking storm to release me from my torment, but it did not come.

Mercifully the hydrotherapy was cancelled, perhaps because we all where boiling alive already, so today we all sat in the lounge area, reading. Buffy was stretched out in a rather vulgar fashion upon the chaise lounge in full sun, eyes shut, a slight smile on her lips. Over the past week her skin had grown bronze and her hair lightened.

"I don't understand how this don't bother the heck out of you." I said. Buffy shifted and cracked open an eye to observe me. "The heat I mean. You're from Long Island, right?"

Buffy quirked an amused brow and lifted herself up on an elbow. When her attention was on me, I felt my heart kick up some. I swallowed and let a long breath out.

"And you're from Biloxi, why does it bother you so?" She said. "Look at you, cowering in the shadows over there. What are you? One of Dracula's brides?"

I snorted and feigned lack of amusement, returning to my novel, but I felt her eyes on me and my lips involuntarily curled into a smile. I couldn't help myself.

"If I were, you would be the first maiden I would bite." I said. I glanced up to see her lingering look- not the first I had noticed, and that too sped up my heart. Cheeks burning hot, I turned away. Was I imagining it? Could Buffy have the same unwholesome and misdirected lusts as I? I dared not dwell on it. I should bury those desires deeper still, for it wouldn't do to be found out. I glanced back, nonetheless, and hazel eyes met mine unabashedly.

The sound of someone hesitantly clearing their throat startled me. I turned to see Nurse McGrath, awkwardly standing to my left. Her eyes darted between me and Buffy, her mouth opening and closing. My cheeks burned with shame.

Buffy rolled her eyes and with a huff went back to sun bathing as if nothing had happened.

"Uh, Ms. Brandon, I am to take you to the alientist now."

"But it isn't Monday." I said. Had I time slipped again? I didn't realize I had had a vision. "Is it?"

"Uh, no. Sh...she… changed it. To today. And… it's today now, so." The flustered nurse said, her eyes darting between Buffy and I.

"She?" I said, a strange fear creeping over me.

"The head of medicine will be seeing you n-now, taking your case over from Doctor Pendergast. Didn't they tell you?" She said, picking at the hem of her uniform. "So we should go… now."

"Oh." I said, and stood and followed the nervous nurse. Buffy was watching me as I left, concern plain upon her beautiful face.

* * *

My vision cleared and I held myself, waiting for the pain to subside. I could smell brass and soil. I felt etched metal with my fingertips, and thought of clocks and crows.

But it was out of sight now, slipping from my mind like a dream one tries to recall but cannot hold onto.

I realised I was holding my breath, straining red faced, lungs roaring for air. I gasped and panted at the hot air, sucking lungfuls in with a hoarse, desperate sound.

Where was I? When was I?

Ginger hair and hot biscuits. Laughter. Blood and ice. An angel's shadow falling on a flooded, matted floor of broken glass and straw. A doll with her head turned backwards. Blood dripping on snow.

No compass. No map.

My hands. Yes, start with my hands. They are on the floor, gritty linoleum in mustard yellow. My fingernails chewed back. Breathe Alice, find time again.

It was evening. The sun dipping below the ever dark forest line, throwing butter and chili paste light across the room. I am on the floor of our room, Buffy's bed is empty and crisply made, as if she was never there. I stagger as I stand, holding onto the cool metal of the bed foot rail.

Where was I before? Was I here? Where was Buffy?

I swallowed some water from the glass on my bedside table and mopped my sweat beaded brow. I could still smell brass and soil. I felt like something ancient had clicked into place. I felt sick and weak and disjointed.

I dragged myself onto the bed and had collapsed just as Nurse McGrath entered carrying a glass of juice.

"Did y'have another seizure?" She said.

"Uh… I think so." I said.

"Are you… did you?"

"What?" I said, fumbling for the offered glass. It was weird, I usually hated the taste of prune juice they used to mask the bromide salts with, but it felt fantastic as it flowed over my dry tongue. It was rich and sweet and sour all at once. Like I hadn't tasted anything in forever.

"Did y'see anything?"

"Why do you ask? S'all stuff and nonsense Blanche, you know that."

The girl looked around for anyone listening, then stepped closer to me and in a hushed tone said "then why's it always come about?"

"It don't though, does it?"

"Auntie says my ma was… y'know… special too. Like, a witch. Said I might be too, it comes down the line sometimes. Hecate's gifts, she calls it. Moon magic."

"I ain't no witch." I said. "M'just sick."

"Oh." She said, her expression sinking. She nodded and turned to leave.

"Where's Buffy at?"

"Who?" Blanche said.

"Nevermind." I said. "M'just a little mixed up."

Nurse McGrath nodded and a smile flickered across her lips. An image flashed into my mind of her, torrid and sensual. I snapped my head away and turned to the window.

The taste of prune juice fading away to acidic ash.

When I looked back, she was gone.

"Dead as my dear heart" I said to no one, and for no reason.

I really _was_ sick.

* * *

That night I saw him through my window, walking through the gardens with a tall dark haired woman in pale white victorian dress. The grounds keeper.

Funny, it never occurred to me that he may have a wife, such was the disgust people showed at his difference. If only they would know his kindness, maybe too they would do as I did and set aside their fears. I no longer thought of Lillian when he visited.

I thought of how I would want a father like him. And seeing that woman, also as deathly pale as him, walking beside him, I found myself aching for a mother to fill the gap. Oh, how my pale, red eyed parents would love me. We would all stroll in the forest at night, far, far from here.

I sighed and looked back at the sleeping form of Buffy. Since she had arrived the grounds keeper had not visited me once. He seemed to deliberately avoid passing her in the corridors. She was like sunlight to him.

Buffy was having a nightmare again, twisting her body and striking out with a slender arm, the muscles chorded and strong. Then her face knotted in anguish. She said something that I couldn't quite make out. It sounded like 'spike'.

I don't know what came over me, but I rose and crossed to her bedside. She seemed in so much pain, I wanted nothing but to comfort her. And so, I softly laid my hand on her arm and pulled it down to her side, stroking back the sweat stained hair on her brow.

"Shush now, Buffy. It's just a dream." I whispered. "It's all just a dream."

She woke, blinking and groggy, hovering in the hypnagogic state as I brushed at her face with cooling fingers. Her hand threaded into mine and she closed her eyes, pressing to my stroking hand.

"Alice?" She whispered.

"You were having a nightmare. It's okay, you are awake now."

"Am I?" She said quietly. "You never remember us when we are here. Where is the boundaries of dreaming? Are we dreaming now? Are you even real?"

"Us?"

Buffy nodded, her face haunted and needy. She shifted back, tugging on our interlocked fingers until I found myself laying beside her. Face to face. I felt my heart pound at my sternum, my breath hitching as I feel her breath warm on my face.

"Alice, I keep thinking I am going to wake up somewhere else. Far from here. For a moment I am confused, like I should be… like I am... someone else, somewhere else. Do you get that?"

I nodded, swallowing. Buffy seemed to me the most real thing here. I felt the warmth of her hand bleeding into mine, spreading through me, building pressure in my chest and in my groin.

"Sometimes" I said "sometimes I wake up and I am ice cold, unable to move, like I am encased in clay. I panic, try to breathe but can't, the pressure is too much on me. But it doesn't hurt. I am trapped in the darkness. Then the heat comes, and I am here. For those brief moments, I feel like I am… not someone else, but… changed. Does that make sense?"

Buffy's brow knotted as she struggled with her thoughts. I watched as a pink tongue tip wetted her lower lip.

"This place aint right." She said. "Everything tastes of ash. And the moon? Have you noticed the moon?"

I turner to the window behind me, my spine tingling with some unnamed dread. I half expect a silhouette, someone to be waiting at the window. But the grounds outside were empty and still in the bright blue moonlight.

"I can't see the moon from here." I whispered.

"No. But it's always full. The light is always the same."

Sometimes I forget we are both mad. She seems like a normal girl to me. No, not normal, exceptional. But here, in the moonlight, as I watch her struggle between dream and reality, her sanity seems as bruised and beaten as mine. Part of me wants to pull back from her, to cover my ears and not listen to her insane whispers. But I know part of me wants it. Wants her in every possible meaning of the word. So I stay beside her, fingers interlocked, aching for her touch.

And as I lay, losing myself in her closeness, her words began to seep into me like her body heat. Everything did taste of ash, but only on some days. On some days the food was full of flavor, bursting brilliant across my tongue. The moonlight changed. I know it did. Did it? Yes. It was dark a few days before.

Wasn't it? I felt a strange sensation like ice cracking and shifting, something black and sickly bubbling up from beneath.

"Alice. When you fall asleep here, do you dream?"

"Yes." I said with some certainty.

"You ever dream of me?" She whispered.

"Always." I whispered back.

"In your dreams, what are we doing?"

I swallowed. My hand stilled on Buffy's face, her cheek burning hot like the sun. She licked her lip again, and I did the same.

"If this is a dream, I could show you, and no one would stop us or tell us it's wrong."

Buffy's eyes glinted in the dark, tears forming at the edges of her sleepy eyes.

"Maybe it is."

"Wrong, or a dream?"

"Both, maybe." She chuckled, squeezing my fingers. I traced my fingers softly down the side of her cheek, making her eyes flutter shut. A distant rumble of thunder echoed through the silent ward.

"If I kiss you, will it taste of ash too?" She said.

"Maybe if you kiss me, we will both wake up." I said.

Buffy startled as something hit the window, and I yelped. She pulled away from me and I froze, my heart hammering. I didn't want to turn to see.

"What is it?" I said.

"I don't know". She said.

A loud crack. I let out a gasp, leaping from the bed, wrapping my shame in dressing gown and scurrying to the doorway. Only then, in the warm light of the hallway did I turn to the window.

Buffy bravely stood between me and the moonlit world outside, her feet planted strong, fists curled at her sides. She approached the window.

"No Buffy… Don't…" I hissed, but she ignored my warning and flipped the latch. The window creaked open, and to my horror she leaned out to get a better look.

"Someone's out there. Throwing stones." She said and I felt chills skitter through me like a nest of spiders.

"Buffy… please… I beg you."

"It's a girl." She said, beckoning.

"No. No, don't let her in!"

I rushed to close the window, terrified of whatever was outside, but as I reached Buffy's side I caught sight of the girl myself.

She was tall, thin, barely a teenager, that long limbed gawky stage before womanhood arrives. Her hair was dark brown, loose and long. She wore a red two piece middy dress, the blouse flecked with pink petals, a sailor collar and a black scarf. The pleated skirt revealed eggshell blue stockings and galoshes.

As she jogged to the window, I recognized her, and I could hardly believe it. She had grown so much since I had last laid eyes on her.

'What are you doing here?" I said.

'Climbing in this here window' the girl said.

"Who is she?" Buffy said, stepping back to let the girl climb in through the window. She dropped down heavily on the floor, out of breath and pleased as punch.

"Cynthia." I said.

"Hey sis." Cynthia said. "Did ya. Miss me?"


	12. Blood On The Tongue

Chapter 11

Blood on The Tongue

Crack!

My head snapped to the side under the force of the punch. Ear whistling fierce, I fell back onto the cold floor, rolling up into a ball instinctively.

Blood welled in my mouth, hot and thick as syrup. The singing pain in my skull made me, for a moment, fear that I had slipped into a vision again. But when I prised open my eye Cynthia was standing over me, damp with rain and shaking out her fist from the punch. Not a second had passed.

"Sweet jesus, you hit me?" I said, wiping at my mouth. It came away red.

"What do you taste?" Cynthia said.

"Why did you-"

"Blood. You taste blood. Right?" She said, earnest and wide eyed. I did- the tinny, rich, salty metallic taste of blood. Not ash, not the gritty, sour acid taste I would have expected, not like the food I had suffered through only hours before.

"Huh. I do." I said, surprised. "I can taste it."

"But sometimes, for no reason, you taste nothing but ash."

I nodded, stunned, not just from the punch but from the realization.

"Buffy said the same not two minutes, didn't you B-"

I turned, but Buffy was nowhere to be seen. Not beside me not across the room, but gone. She had completed vanished.

Lightning flashed white light cross the stark bed, revealing it was not only empty, but neatly made up. I frantically stroked my hands over it in disbelief. I had laid with her in it not a moment ago. She sheets where cold and crisp. Her dressing table bare; I couldn't see a scrap of the clothing that usually littered her floor.

"So." Cynthia sighed, resignation thick in her voice. "It's true. She ain't lyin'. Every damn word is true."

"You shouldn't have come." I snapped at the girl.

"Alice, I-"

"No! I don't want you seeing me like this." I said, slumping my butt onto the cruelly empty bed. Hot tears flowed a moment later. "Not like this. Oh Cynthia. Oh, god what you must think of me."

"It's okay. Alice, it's okay." She pulled me into an embrace, hushing me. "You should know, sis, I happen to think the world of you."

"I am so lost. Everything's jumbled. Up here. I am a mess. I am such a mess."

"I know." She chuckled, darkly. Her hand stroked over my short hair, smoothing it down. "And that's why I am here. Had hoped it wasn't, but, magic is a damn strange thing by its nature."

"Oh Cynthia. Cynthia, I'm not magic." I said, pulling her into a trembling hug "I'm not magic, I am just mad. Just mad." I whispered. "You can't be here. It's not safe."

"I know. He nearly got me, but I was too smart for him. Too fast. And you are magic, Mary Alice, but I wasn't talking about you." She pulled back a little so she could crouch down eye to eye. Her face was strange to me now, like It had been long forgotten and was only bleeding back into my mind now. And yet the face didn't quite fit right in my memory. It was a little too long, the freckles faded, the waxy child skin growing opaque with blooming womanhood, her blue eyes doe like but smaller in her face. Unmistakably Cynthia, but not the whining little sister I left behind. I ran my hand over her fuller cheek, feeling the solid reality of her.

"Pa was right, Cynthia. I am crazy. You are not safe with me."

"Shush now, and listen, I don't think we got much time." She said. "I wish I could change it for you Mary Alice, believe me, I thought I-" her head snapped up in a fashion that told me the nurse was coming. I tilted my head and heard the echo of hushed voices down the hall.

"They can't find me here. We need to go."

"Back out the window" I suggested, but she looked terrified by that idea.

"No way. He's out there, I just know it. Lurking out there, so we can't go back out."

"Pa?"

Cynthia shook her head, there was something like pity in her eyes. She bit at her full lower lip and swallowed.

"Who then?"

Cynthia pulled back my bed covers and nodded for me to get in. She then dropped down and slid herself under the bed just as a flashlight hit me. I winced, drawing my hand up for my face. I couldn't see past the piercing glow.

"Ms. Brandon, why are you up?" Came the matrons voice. She entered, coming up to the side of the bed.

"Bleeding." I said. "Must have bitten my tongue or something in my sleep see?" The matron grabbed my face, angling it in an indelicate manner.

"You been outside?" She said, staring into my mouth. I made the closest thing to a shake my head could manage in her grip. "Clarita said she saw someone through her window, not ten minutes ago, gave her the fright of her life."

"S'it mah tongue?"

"Lip. Just mop it, don't look bad. I can get you some ice."

"If you don't mind none." I said. "What she say they look like?"

"Black clothes. Pale skin. Dark hair."

I felt a chill go down my spine.

"Ain't got no black clothes here, I swear. But that sounds like the grounds keepers wife to me."

"That albino?" She said, raising a brow. "He doesn't have a wife. You seeing things again?"

"Maybe. I… the girl whose bed that is…Buffy..."

"You see her now?" She said, calmly.

"No." I said with a frustrated sigh. "Is… is there a Buffy Summers here? A patient?"

The matron looked at me, nodding evenly like a sine wave. She patted me firmly on the shoulder.

"Get back to bed ms. Brandon I will get your ice." I laid back on my bed, and she pulled the sheet up to my chin, tucking them around me like some unspoken binding. 'Don't move', her actions warned.

I lay still in the darkness of my room, which had taken on a sinister emptiness all of a sudden. Images of ghosts and monsters crept up on me. Of dark figures stalking the dark woods outside, of fingers clawing at the glass, of ghost girls who haunt my bedroom. Images of bloodied throats and long shadows.

The girl whispering from beneath my bed was real. Wasn't she?

"Listen sister. I cannot explain, but your memories are being used against you. A long, long time from now, you will be trapped somewhere and something is going to be using your own memories to trick you. Memories of now, of this present time. You still taste blood now, right?"

"Yes. Yes, I taste blood." I whispered.

"Your tongue is your key. The ash times, those are the illusionary times. When it has you. Those are lies."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to. You just have to remember this moment, the things I say. Because when she tries to prize open your memories, she will open them to you… including this memory. It will come back."

"Cynthia, what are you yabberin' about? I don't understand."

"Alice, you were right about papa, and that devil woman he married. She murdered mama and got her claws in deep to him. I ran away, and a woman took me in. She taught me glorious things Alice… stuff like what you spoke of… of… of magic and of the future."

"Cynthia, you are talking nonsense."

"Thats her talking. It. Hush it up and listen. You are not the only gifted one in our family, dear sister. I am too. I just needed a guiding hand. Look, if she is right, and she has been so far, they are coming to catch me soon. And they will. Nothing can be done about it. You just gotta remember the taste of blood and of ash. Alice. Blood and ash. Truth and lies. Past and present."

Cynthias hand found mine in the dark. It felt creepily real. I looked at the empty bed across from me.

"Cynthia, I could never forget you."

"Shush. Ain't your fault. The horrors you are about to go through will break you. Your mind will build a wall and you will forget. A mercy. Is what it is. And I will be all bricked up behind it. Until the future. Or, I guess, until now. Again." She laughed at the thought. "Time is a strange beast."

There was a telephone ringing down the hall. A few minutes later, lights flickered on.

The hand squeeze felt strangely final. But perhaps it was just a reprieve, at the very least, I knew I got to say goodbye.

"I won't forget you, Alice."

"I won't…"

The hand was gone.

And when I looked, so was Cynthia.

"Here" said Nurse Cox, handing me the icepack. "And I got you some prune juice to wash out the blood some."

"Hey Cox, make mine a martini" Buffy chucked from her bed. "Extra olives, thanks." I glared across at her, half expecting her to vanish as I blinked. She remained.

"Well see now, I would, ms. Summers, and join you too, but didn't you hear?" The woman smiled wryly "The Eighteenth amendment passed. We are officially in prohibition."

"Spoil my fun." The girl sulked, slamming down her pillow over her head. Nurse Cox chuckled and left. Everything went back to moonlight and a silence peppered with distant thunder.

I settled back in myself, clutching the ice pack to my aching jaw, and tried to shake the confused images from my broken mind. I wanted the rains to break, to bring the cool air across my feverish skin. It felt like perhaps the cool air would somehow carry on it my sanity. I was so tired now, eroded, beaten down by conflicting imagery. I felt thin to snapping point. Haunted by horrors, holding on by the last dregs of my identity. I took the glass up in my hand and brought the cool liquid to my dry lips.

It tasted of ash.

* * *

"Alice? Are you having a turn?" The woman's voice said in that strange foreigner's accent of hers. I took in a deep breath and tried to get my bearings. When and where was I?

"I… uh… I think…"

"It's fine Mary Alice, you can be honest, you are safe here." She said, all warm and slow. Would it be crazy of me to say her her words were like the smell of baked bread? But… who was she again?

I was sitting upon a hard, heavy wooden chair so tall my slippered toes were barely touching the sickly yellow linoleum floor. Before me was a wooden desk, one I was unfamiliar with. It was heavy and seemingly ancient. Upon it, a steel fan had been placed to my left, next to an open window, it was angled towards my face, chopping at the midday heat. I could make out the sound of Cicadas chirruping through the whomping of the fan blades.

Crack. Shift. No map. No compass.

"Alice?"

I followed the voice to find a woman seated to my right, her swivel chair creaking something awful as she leaned back and angled her head to observe me. She was middle aged, perhaps, olive skinned with glossy black hair pulled back tight, dressed all smart and proper. A doctor, I guessed, but I don't remember a woman doctor ever seeing me.

She lowered her leather notebook and fountain pen upon her lap and smiled.

"It's okay Alice. You are safe.

Just get your bearings for a bit, and maybe when you are ready, perhaps tell me what you just experienced."

I realised I was staring at her, mouth flapping like a catfish. I took in a breath and tried to look away, but there was something in her manner that made that impossible. A kindness, perhaps, a gravity. She didn't seem bothered by my gaze, not like Nurse McGrath, she just sat patient as Job. Open. Waiting. Close. My eyes fell upon her slender fingers as they wound absently around her long string of pearls.

"I'm sorry-" a glance at the brass plaque on the desk a gave me "Doctor Mynegon".

"Nothing to be sorry about." She smiled softly.

"M'just a bit giddy s'all. Discombobulated some."

"That's quite alright. Can you tell me where you are."

"Mmmm. Jackson State Loon- uh hospital." I said, crossing my arms across my chest. I was wearing a slip and a faded robe. Had I been here long? Why didn't I remember her? Was I getting worse.

"Good." She said. "May I ask, did you have a vision again?" My eyes rose to her face but I didn't find a lick of sarcasm, nor mockery in her voice, something I found quite set me aback. "Care to describe it?"

"S'strange. My sister was here. Cynthia. Like, but she was older than I remember. Is she? Did… she visit?"

"I'm sorry, she has never to my knowledge visited." The doctor said. "Would you like her to?"

I wasn't sure. The feeling I had when I saw her was confused, shame, dread, fear… I should have been joyful to see her but…

"Where you close?" I nodded. She took down a note. "In this vision, what did she say?"

"Nothin. Hello. She just arrived. Through our window. Buffy saw her and…"

"Buffy?" She said, her eyebrow quirked.

"The girl who shares my room?"

"You talk about Buffy a great deal. Do you often dream about Buffy?" She said. I nodded. "Was this another erotic dream?"

I was back to playing catfish, this time my cheeks burning. I tried to turn my head away, but I may as well have been trying to steer a house.

"It's alright Alice. You have my confidence. Nobody is judging. I think you will feel a good deal better if you talk about this instead of bottling it up. Trust me. Nothing good comes from trapping your darkness."

"What… what do you want to hear?"

She shifted back, closing the notepad and putting the pen onto the desk.

"Your thoughts. Your feelings. Help me know how to help you. You know that's my goal? To help you? I want to see you free, happy, out there." She smiled again, a row of tiny perfect white teeth. She stabbed a slender finger towards the window. "Don't you want to get better? To be free?"

"Suppose, I… thought I was never getting out of here."

"Maybe you should focus on that." She said. "Nobody and nothing should be caged, Alice."

"Maybe some things have to be, for everyone else's sake."

The woman… Doctor Myhnegon's eyes flashed with anger, sneered and shook her head in such a manner that I felt for a moment she was going to lash out and strike my face. I must have been jumpy, for a moment later she seemed perfectly composed and open again.

"You are trapped in a world of unfair rules and crushing expectations that have brought you here. You are different to most You know this. You are the proverbial square peg in a round hole. That's why you are in here, Alice. Not because the world is better off with you locked away. Because it refuses to give you what you need."

"A square hole?" I quipped, then blushed again, and bit my lip in shame. Her eyes sparkled and a wry grin crossed her face.

"I am Chief of Medicine here. And a woman. And unmarried, I might add. I know a thing or two about being a square peg in a world of round holes" She said. "You know what I did?"

"Made a square hole?"

She smiled and folded her arms across her lap.

"Tell me about your vision of Buffy and your sister"

"I… it's fading." I said, then stammered "but I'm not lying. Just fading s'all. Before Cynthia came in through the window we were-"

Doctor Myhnegon sat calmly, openly. I felt it then, like a huge pressure building up inside, like a shook bottle of soda pop.

"Kissing. Is it okay we were kissing some?" I knotted my fingers together in my lap.

"How did you feel about that?"

"Ashamed." I said. "Confused. Elated, I guess."

"Did you fantasize about biting her again?" The doctor said. "Drinking her blood."

"Biting? What?" I stammered. "Drink… I... I would never, never think… I never hurt anyone. Is that what pa said? He say I hurt someone?"

"It's okay Alice. It's just dreams. It's all just dreams. You have shared your fantasies with me before."

"I have? I did?" I said, swallowing back the sour taste, feeling my stomach twisting all sickly like. Anger was rising in that stew pot too, I felt my teeth sharp against my lips. "I… why can't I remember?"

"Memories… dreams." The woman said, scratching her neck with a long fingernail, "Even the present reality… are all similar things internally speaking. What is a memory but a dream? What are dreams but something made of memories?"

"And visions?"

"You are lost Alice. Let's find a way out. Together. As we unlock this, your memories will become more reliable. You want that, don't you?"

"Of course." I said, "I told you that I dreamt of drinking blood?" The idea seemed familiar, vibrating true through my body, if not my mind. I shuddered at the idea. But not in fear. My cheeks burned hot.

"Many times. And, how you fantasize about being a vampire. Far from here, where the air is cold and crisp. With a beautiful, supportive family." She said, smiling. "In your fantasy, Buffy is a vampire as well, and that she loves you and shares eternity with you, and no one judges you. You are loved."

"I remember dreaming about something like that. I think." I sighed, and it felt like my hopes came out of my mouth on my breath. Cold tears were forming in my eyes. "I think, perhaps I dream about that a lot. What does it mean?"

"How do you feel about Ms. Summers?"

"She confuses me."

"Should we move her to another room?"

"No!" I gasped out before I could catch my tongue. "I… I mean… please, she keeps me… I… she makes me feel…"

"What?"

"Real." I said. The tears trailed cool streaks down my hot cheeks. I wanted to bathe in them, let the chill take away the burning in me. "Please. I want to feel real again."

The doctor closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, then she nodded, and reached out to place her hand on the desk before me. There was an oil cloth draped over it, which she drew back to reveal what appeared to be a disc of tarnished copper. It was over a foot wide, I would guess, and was made up of concentric circles, each ring etched with what seemed like a hundred symbols in some foreign tongue.

"What is it?"

"An exercise. A puzzle. Designed to let you focus your mind in the present."

"You want me to solve that?" I swallowed. "But, I can't even read it. There must be a million combinations."

"Two hundred and sixteen thousand combinations. And you get the order wrong it resets and the base pattern shifts. Solving it is not the point. It is the act of doing that frees your mind. Here, try it."

I placed my hand upon the outermost dial, instinctively knowing it wasn't where I should start. My fingers slid over the metal to a squiggly diamond shape on the third circle from the center. I felt the click in my mind before my hand slid it into place. The ring snapped down as I pressed with a small hiss and a satisfying click.

"See?" Doctor Myhnegon said, her smile broad and warm. "You're a natural."

I reached for the second symbol that sang to me.


	13. A Mouthful of Ashes

Chapter 12

A Mouthful of Ashes

Cynthia was haunting my thoughts, her words played over and over in my mind like that two-reeler mother once took us to. I laid in bed, listening to the faint rumbling of the storm and the skitter-scatter of leaves.

I was restless. My sheets long kicked down the bed away from my sweat sheened legs. Despite the dry heat, the mosquitoes were biting something fierce. The only sounds from inside the building was the occasional clicking of a nurses heels down the corridor.

Buffy wasn't here again. And despite myself I checked under the bed for Cynthia. Of course she wasn't there, and I chastised myself for hoping, for I could still faintly taste the bromide and prune juice still, the drug would be fresh in my veins.

I was thinking about blood on my lips. The taste of ash, of black ink soaking into paper. Of an idealized family of monsters that somehow all loved me, flitting through the woods.

I tried to shut it out, so help me I promise I tried, but the whole mess of thoughts remained. I guess I felt lonesome, and my mind was conjuring them all up. But I felt a failure at even that, for both of my dream guests brought paranoid words and fear with them.

I tried again to cancel out their images, to focus on the satisfying click of the brass puzzle. I guess this is why Dr. Myhnegon set me about it. Something to focus on. And I had to admit enjoying the thrill of a thousand possible futures whizzing through my mind, and the one snapping into place as I selected. It felt solid, real, like progress, like each sigil snapping into place was a footstep on cold, firm earth.

And as much as I wanted Buffy to be real, she wasn't. I had to make a decision. To entertain the irrational imagery my mind conjured, or focus on getting out of here.

I so wanted to get out of here.

I heard the mosquito make another run at my flesh, but I was too tired to swat it. It fell silent as it landed to drink from me. There was no sting, just the silence. And I felt myself slipping into sleep.

Crack. Shift. My skull cracks and grinds fire through my mind.

I am on my knees on the frozen ground. The snow is coated grey with grave ash, and my arms are flecked with dirt and spattered with blood.

"Alice!" Rosalie wails, "please… no… Alice" her voice filled with agony. She is kneeing before me, back arched back as her assailant stands behind her, feet pinning her ankles to the battlefield. I see her face contorted in pain as her head is wrenched back, the silvery cracks appearing at her throat. Mercilessly strong fingers, covered in blackened blood are clamped about her face.

Buffy's hands.

Her scream blended with the metallic screech.

"Stop! Buffy, stop this!" I screamed. And she did, pausing to lock her eyes upon me. Eyes that were as black as oil, black beyond the thirst. Her beautiful lips cracked open into a smile like a corpse grin, fang filled and thick with black foam and grave ash.

She watched me as she wrenched Rosalie's head free. She watched me as my sister's skull crumbled in her hands. She watched me as a huge pillar of soil launched up into the air from the hills behind her, the booming, bellowing roar that arrived on the shockwave, tearing at the battlefield, throwing wolf corpses and ash up into the sky. Three immense tentacles followed, their size defying sanity, snaking up and out of the hellmouth.

Buffy turned to gaze upon the event. Just for a moment. It was all I needed to pull the stake from her boot. To grip it to my chest and throw myself forward onto her. To sink it deep into her heart.

When Buffy turned to look at me again, her terrified eyes were golden once more, and to my horror, I realised the elder god had released her.

Buffy was free.

She crumbled to ash just as the shockwave hit us both.

"Alice, baby?" Willow's voice was reaching me through the darkness, through the thick smoke and death ash. I gasped and opened my eyes. Find time. Find my place.

Willow stroked my face, slender fingers wiping away the… vision? The nightmare? The memory? Where was I? When was I?

"Baby, you're safe. You're back." She whispered, holding me to her. She repeated it softly as I found my bearings.

The cave. Of course. The den of scavenged fabrics woven into the rag tag metal frame that formed our private chamber, our sanctuary. Small, womb like and safe. If I pulled back the fabric I knew beyond would be the wet slate walls of the cave that hid us from the hellscape of our world. From the Turokhan and The Slayers. From her.

She was entwined with me where we lay upon the floor, upon the sleeping bags and furs. We were both naked, the smell of sex and blood filling my nostrils. She kissed my forehead with cold lips.

"I was at the battle again." I said, gasping air. "Rosalie… when…"

"It doesn't make any sense." Willow sighed. "Your visions point backwards now."

"Yeah, well, can't see a future if there isn't one." I sat up, wincing as pain shot up from my scorched, ruined leg. Even after two months, The Scythe wound still hadn't healed. I thought back to before the fall, to the horrific wounds The Volturi guard had suffered at the hands of Faith Lehane. That bitch may have been drunk dry, but the ginger one that followed inherited that cursed weapon. No visions to warn me anymore, no foresight. I was lucky it was just my leg. I strapped on the splint, snapping the bindings in place. "Can't receive messages from the powers that be if they are all dead too."

Willow rolled onto her back, watching me as I got dressed.

"Where are you going?" Willow said.

"I'm hungry. I need to hunt."

"It's only been four hours." she moaned, rubbing her face.

"It's my goddamn wound eating me up" I said, "rats just aren't enough." I snapped a new power cell into The Initiative pulse saw pistol and thumbed the charge button. It gave a high pitched whine that told me it was only half charged. I cursed under my breath. "And before you say it, I am not going there."

"It makes sense. There are still hu-"

"I will not die a monster."

"That's what we are, Alice." Willow growled. "We did this. You and I."

"I did this." I said. "I did."

The image of Buffy's last moments came to me again. The look in her golden eyes as she realised what I had done. The fear. The pain. The regret.

I felt weak again, and the world was spinning, the hellish, burning, bloodless world that I had unleashed. I fell, but Willow had me in her arms, guiding me down to our bed.

"Shhhhhh, it's okay" Willow said, "It's okay."

"No, Willow. Nothing will ever be okay again." I said, with certainty.

Because when I bit my lip, I could taste my blood.

Shift. Crack. Pain.

I gasped lungs full of hot stuffy air laced with disinfectant. I was in the ward again, laying in my twisted bedsheets. Moonlight streamed through the window, bright as a automobile lamps, casting Buffy into silhouette.

Where this Willow girl had been not a moment before, in my dream, Buffy was now. She held me as I sobbed and gasped, soft hushes on her lips. I gathered myself, calming my breaths, gripping the sheets into painful knots.

"You were having a nightmare." Buffy whispered, her sweet breath cooling to my feverish skin.

"No." I said. "I wasn't."

I seized her head and pulled her to me, my kiss hot and greedy. She mewled for a moment in her surprise, but I held the kiss, clutching her face.

A head clutched between claws.

"Alice?" Buffy whispered, her eyes wide with shock. She pulled back from me, and I let her go, staring at my hands. "What are you…? We can't… it's… it's..."

I licked my lips, tasting her kiss. A dark laugh slipped from me. Of course she tasted that way. Of course she did.

"Alice?"

"Fuck me Buffy." I growled. "I want you to fuck me."


	14. Buried Deep

Chapter 13

Buried Deep

Surging. That's all I can call it. I was surging, bursting, flowing over with anger and confusion and frustration and lust. I wanted to break her, devour her, make her pay with her body and her bones.

Her eyes widened at my words, and her perfect lips fell open. Are these lips made from memories? I bit them, sucking her lower lip into my mouth. She moaned, low enough to make me vibrate through my body. What else do I remember? I thought, and pressed my body to hers, feeling the caress of her breasts against mine through the fabric. A growl formed in my throat as I let my wantoness take its fill. The friction renewed my feverish desire, so much it sang through me… but not enough to quench the other voices screaming their will. Vengeance spoke to me, as desperate, and as urgent as the ache between my legs.

Her hands slid over my sweat damned clothes as she hooked her arms around behind me. I shoved her away, refusing to be encircled anymore, and rose to intercept her. We she struck the wall to the left of the window, rattling the dresser and the windowpane, and I swear she gave a growl before I kissed her silent.

She reached for me again, fingers hooked and urgent into the meagre flesh of my hips. No. I caught them up and pinned them to the wall above her, defying her resistance, leaning my whole weight against her.

She gasped for air against my neck, ragged and sweet. Liar. Lies. I pressed my hot, damp lips to her throat and breathed in the taste of her skin. Is this made of memories too?

"Alice" she gasped, "please."

"What do you want from me?"

"I don't… I don't care. Just touch me. Please. Alice, please."

"Please what? What have you to demand of me? You are not even real."

Her brow furrowed at this, and whatever she tried to say I clamped silent with my hand. Hot breaths rushed through my tightened fingers. Wide eyes, desire, fear. Good.

"Or maybe you once were." I growled, thrusting my hips forward to give her the friction she needed, somehow I knew how, a confidence of body that did not surprise me at all. "Maybe, there is a real Buffy. Maybe she is mine, or was. Either way, you have no right to wear her face. That's it isn't it? Cynthia was right. All this is made of my past. So you must be too."

The next thing I know, the ceiling tumbles down before me, and I am crashing to the floor on the far side of the bed. My lungs empty as my ribs strike the linoleum. Somehow the girl has thrown me with nothing but her hip.

A second later, she is on me, and it was my turn to have my hands pinned above my head. She is heavier than I imagined, stronger by far. There was no way she could be human, and with her back to the window she became an inky black silhouette against the moonlight. For an instant, I see rows of razor fangs dripping ichor behind, a maw splitting her face wide, but then as she leans into the light, no such horror awaits. Her face is soft in the moonlight, young, mortal. Kiss swollen lips parted, eyes wide in shock.

"Alice?" She whispers, as if she doesn't believe it herself. "Are… is it really… are you real?"

"Enough of this crap. Let me go." I say through clenched teeth. She shakes her head, first in disbelief, then firmer, as an answer. Her lips tremble as she leans down to look at me, really look at me.

The orange lights flicked on in the hall, and frantic voices. The nurses had heard us.

"There coming." She said, her face tightening.

"Why don't you just vanish then?" I growl.

"You are just full of good ideas tonight, aintcha?" She said, and stood sharply, pulling me to my feet without any apparent effort. My wrists complained at her vice grip as she lead me to the window, and cracked it open with her free fist.

The next thing I knew I was being dragged barefoot through the hospital grounds. The grass was damp and cool, with crepe myrtle blooms crushing and jamming between my toes. The moon was rising beyond the darkened hospital, the three story Kirkbride building was serrated with spires. Buffy was dragging me away from the center tower, towards the eastern end. I had never been that way, and became aware of a terrible feeling; that we would plunge past my memories and into nothingness.

"Crap." She said sharply as the lights started to flicker on inside. Much to my horrors she changed course, and I found myself pulled towards the black band of woods.

"Not there. Please."

"I know what I am doing."

"Please. I don't want to go in there." I cried.

"Why is that, I wonder?" She said, pausing to look at me, before her head snapped back towards the hospital. "Sorry toots. Way it's gotta be."

She moved faster than I, despite my best efforts, I barely stayed on my feet as she plunged us into what seemed like complete darkness.

After what seemed like an eternity, we broke through into a moonlit clearing. To my horror, I realised it was a graveyard. I was breathing hard and my belly was gnawing at my flesh to escape, but I held it down, somehow. Buffy slowed, her head scanning the shadows as she lead me.

"I don't remember this place." I said.

"What is a memory but a dream?" Buffy said absentmindedly.

"Doctor Myhnegon said the same thing." I said. "I am tired of this. Stop. Just stop." I dug my heels into the soil, and grabbed Buffy's wrists. She relented and stood, one hand on her hip, glaring.

"Smart. Changing it up. I thought you would torture me with this broken Alice crap for eternity, but… props to you, whatever you are."

"Enough!" I screamed, clutching at my head and slumping down onto one of the tombstones. Buffy flinched, shushing me. Her eyes darted to the treeline behind us. I couldn't hear voices or dogs or anything, but she seemed to be listening to something. I shuddered.

"Okay, listen. We stay here, they catch us. There is a ruined chapel up there that we can hide out in for a bit, at least until we untangle what is going on."

"Chapel?" Dread poured through me. A stone angel, and one of flesh like stone. "No."

"Okay, I'll bite. So, let's say you are Alice Cullen. The real Alice Cullen then I-"

"Cullen?" I laughed, burying my hands in my exhausted face. "How could you possibly know the name from my dreams? You are her, aren't you? This is all an illusion, and you know what? I am done. You let me out or kill me. I ain't giving you another moment satisfaction. And I ain't solving your puzzle for ya."

"Rude much? Let me finish, why don't you. By god, you certainly got that bit right about her." She chuckled grimly. "Wait, did you say puzzle?"

I glared at her.

"She makes me do that too. That's it! That's how we get out of here. We need to break back in and find the puzzle. Quick! We can double back and…"

"No. You made a mistake."

"What are you… you are my Alice right?"

"I am Buffy's. And you are not Buffy. Not my Buffy. Not some Buffy I dreamed up in my madness, or a sexual fantasy I assembled and projected on some poor fellow patient. My Buffy is from Forks. A vampire, like me. So give all this… this… charade up. You screwed up."

Buffy stepped forward, her lips trembling or perhaps trying to find words. Cautiously, she edged towards me, searching my face.

It was a subtle change, impossible to describe, but her manner became deeply unsettling. My spine squirmed like a worm on a hook as her smile peeled back across her face. Whatever it was laughed deep and loud.

"I was this close and don't you dare pretend otherwise." She said, running her slender fingers through her black bobbed hair and stepping back away from me.

"Who are you?"

"I am like you. Trapped. I just want to get out of here."

"The puzzle."

"The puzzle." She said. The Buffy thing slumped down onto a stone sarcophagus, and groaned. "I knew you were remarkable, Alice, but to defeat my Irkalla? How?"

It's funny how easy it is to ignore pure terror when you have resolved yourself to fate. Even with her feet from me, I found myself able to look away, look around me at the graveyard. Memories rolled over me like a new dawn.

I was wrong. I knew this place. I could see it now, a darkened spire nestled among the bare trees. The chapel, the only still shape in trembling black woods. I walked towards it, numbly drawn to it. With each footstep memories began to claw their way back up from the mists in my brain. Dark minions bearing gifts of pain and pleasure.

Buffy was waiting at the chapel as I stepped inside, of course. She sat patiently at one of the two dozen or so pews, black eyes fixed on me. I caught her reflection in the filthy water that submerged the chapel and I immediately had to look away. Whatever it was would not stay in my mind, it mercifully slithered out from memory a moment later.

"It only flooded after the storm." I said, drawing in the musty smell that had greeted my new life. "This is all wrong."

"Your memory, Alice. Not mine." It said. "How did you do it?"

"Like I said, it wasn't me. You made the mistake."

I felt him lurking in the shadows behind me. And took in a deep breath and held it. No urgency, no pain. I raised my hand to find it marble white, the scarred fingertips now smooth, the chewed nails were perfect moons once again.

"Using your dream name? Come now, Buffy could have broken into your personal records. Again. I mean, she did that exact thing to you in Forks. Not the most trusting person. Besides, you didn't have that memory until I clawed it out of your broken little brain."

"You hid a summoning spell in a prophecy."

She smiled.

"And someone hid something in me." I said. "I would call that poetic irony."

"I made a prison from my own blood, woven from your memories of the subject. How do you escape that?"

"With the only thing that could." I laughed darkly. "A memory."

Buffy, or, whatever it really was stood up and fixed its oil black eyes on me.

"Solve the seal." It said.

"It's over. I mean it." I said, firmly.

"No, Alice. Not for me.." She said. "It's just a waiting game now. Just time. You have tasted immortality now. You know what time means to the eternal. Speaking of which, I just remembered… one of us is truly immortal, the other needs blood to survive, even in torpor." The thing sat up and crossed her legs casually. "You have three sigils to go on your side. You finish your work, free me, and I have my thralls free you."

"No." I said. The thing was close now, the mockery of Buffy's face inches from mine. My flesh felt like it wanted to crawl from my bones to get away from her.

"I see another future Alice… you will like this one. Picture this. Once my avatar Diana and her toy slayer is done sending your beloved family screaming to the winds, she will bring my glove to your resting place and tear your gift from you. Then I will arise from The La Push Hellgate and the very first thing I will do in this realm is find your little Buffy. Can you imagine the things I will do to her?"

"You may wear her face, but you have no idea what she is capable of."

Behind me, Angelus began to laugh.


	15. In Memoriam

Chapter 14

In Memoriam

His laughter crawled over my skin, dissolving any resistance on contact. Something broke loose within me and I started to shiver and convulse; a long gasp left my lips, strangled and strained. I couldn't move. Couldn't turn. Wouldn't.

The thing wearing Buffy's face tilted her head to better observe me breaking, A look of mock pity on her lips. She was richly rewarded, as my defiance fled me, bled from my body and left me mewling in my terror. She slinked forward until her face was mere inches from me, and I could see the glossy red lips glinting in the shafts of moonlight.

"Last chance, Alice".

Angelus' laughter echoed through the darkened eves of the tiny chapel, surrounding me, crushing me inwards.

Please, please, I begged my shattering mind, anywhere but here.

Crack, shift, no map no compass.

Mercy.

Buffy hummed deep and throaty as she lay by my side among the ferns. Her fingers trembled against my flesh as the deer's life blood coursed through her. The air was still and silent, all musky-spicy with leaf litter and blood.

I opened my eyes and turned my head to take in her beatific expression, her lips still ruby from the kill. I could see the finest pale hairs on her velvet cheek glinting opalescent in the sunlight, and traced my eyes down the soft mound of her cheek as it glowed gracefully down to her chin. Her pale flesh mirrored the green and gold of the forest, and she seemed in that instant to be part of it all, a creature of nature at peace in its unfathomable beauty and horror.

Perfect lips curl back against mine as I kissed her bloody mouth, and the sweet taste makes me sigh. Life and love, fluid and yet eternal.

Crimson eyes open to me, this close, they are nebulas of every shade of red, growing richer as life force flows through her, dilating to take me in.

"Alice." She whispered, and I felt her caress against my cheek. "My Alice."

Her eyes widened and I followed her gaze to her hand. A beam of sunlight had broken through the ever present clouds. As her hand shimmered and split the light into a thousand million diamonds, she laughed, and any shame I had for turning her fell away.

"Yours. Always." I reply.

* * *

His punch sounds like a gunshot as it hit my jaw, and the world turns into a moonlit blur. The foul water swallows me, and I strike my skull upon the chapel flagstone beneath.

Huge, powerful hands grabbed at my clothes and wrenched me upwards, and I gasp and splutter out filthy black water.

"You robbed me." Angelus screams at my face, that accursed wicked smile nowhere to be seen for the first time. "She was mine! She was mine!" I rolled my eyes to see the grounds keeper standing defiantly by the statue.

Had he… bitten me? My throat felt on fire, stinging sharp, kinda like that time I was a child of four I fell through that glass window. Stitches never stung like this though, and the split lip from the punch don't hurt nowhere near as much. My mind flicked about, this way and that, making no sense. Not like a vision. Not like… oh my, I can't move. Why can't I move?

"It was perfect, you fool. She was to be my masterpiece!"

I hit the water again all heavy, couldn't gasp, couldn't breathe. I feel the slimey cold water filling my mouth and throat and... Oh please. No. I am shaking like a fit, and everything is getting hot, real hot, like they are boiling the water.

Oh please, please, please, save me. This is your house, ain't it? Save me.

Save me.

I know I was wicked…

I know I was…

I take it all back…

I…

I…

I...

* * *

I am floating in the darkness when the pain finally died away. Weightless, without need or breath or want. Is this heaven? Or hell?

Was I in hell when everything was fire and my nerves screamed? Is this what happens after? Did hell burn me up and spit out what is left like a blackened match stick. All I could sense was that I was here, alone. He is gone, like the pain. No more torment. No more suffering. Just me and my thoughts floating in the dark.

Thank you. Thank you. You had mercy on me.

But… it is coming again. Rising inside of me, a burning, a need. But different. I want… I want… I have to… what?

Wait, I am moving, pressing against… walls? My fingers were there, feeling… something? Yes, I have fingers in this place, hands and… I feel a softness between them… like soil but warm or… something like if… nothing was a something. I have fingers and I am thinking? There is an up. I was completely aware there is an up above me.

I am thirsty… a burning thirst like none I have ever… I need… I have to get out of here. I… I can push up, up and up and up, I have to, have to, I need, I need, hungry, so, so… my hand is free. Yes, just a little more, so, so thirsty….

He is waiting for me in the dark, smiling as I claw myself free of the dirt. I hate him, I hate him, I… smell, oh.

What is that?

It smells… what is that… I need.

I see her. The shape of a child, but not human, surely? Not a person. She doesn't smell like a child she… smells like heaven and I need to… I… just need to end this hell… I...

Oh.

Oh.

So good. So… so good. Yes. Yes. Heaven. This is heaven, surely. Surely. Nothing tastes this good, nothing so satisfying and I feel so alive and amazing and strong, this is…

My eyes focused, my mind cleared. The moon above said I was in the darkness yet it seemed like day. Around me the forest glimmered and teemed with life, clicking of bugs and the rasp of fur on burrow walls. The scents danced through my mind, fuller and bolder, screaming the names of a hundred flowers and animals and one scent above all.

Angelus watched me as I sniffed the air like a beast. The smile on his lips turned my stomach, and I felt a growl rise in me, savage and inhuman.

"What have you done to me?" I said, my words muffled by the teeth in my mouth.

"Me?" He said in mock innocence. "Why, I just arranged a family reunion, s'all" he said in that musical irish lilt.

I looked down into the lifeless eyes of my sister.

I looked down to see what I had done to my Cynthia.


	16. Notice!

Hey all, thanks for following this story. Just a heads up, I realised I can compress the next story into this one by intercutting between Buffy and Alice. Which is waaaay better a format and keeps us with our heronine from the last two books during the arc of her own struggles.

The existing chapters will remain and new ones shuffled in.

So, while I was trying to figure out the restructuring I rolled out an older story Unravel The Girl and it took off.

I am gonna wrap that one first, and then come back!

Thanks for all your follows and support so far. XXXX

DarKade


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